“We work far away from home. The old and young are still in the village. If the family can’t even spend New Year together, life would be pointless.” These are the words of one of the countless Chinese workers who make the heroic journey from the new industrial areas to their villages in the provinces each year. In a calm and observational style devoid of comment, Lixin Fan captures two years in the life of one of these families.

The father and mother left the poverty of the countryside 16 years ago, leaving their young daughter behind with her grandparents. Now they work long hours in one of the numerous gray factories that supply the West with cheap clothing. That said, the most toilsome endeavour is the New Year trip. The sight of the multitude gathered at the station is disconcerting, and the couple wait for a ticket for days. When a snowstorm arrives, the chaos is complete.

They still manage time and again, but will they also succeed in keeping the family together and ensuring an education for their children with the money they send home? Painful moments reveal that the patience the Chinese are known for has its limits.

The older generation sometimes disparagingly calls them “coconut heads” (or “brainless youth”), but the students at the University of Ibadan, the oldest in Nigeria, are anything but that. They follow up their visits to a campus film club with in-depth discussions about subjects such as feminism, migration, human rights, colonialism, and politics. The debate gets heated sometimes, but always stays focused on the subject.

Nigeria and its neighbouring countries face many issues. Unemployment and corruption are rife, freedom of expression is under threat, and student life is tough for many reasons. Alain Kassanda intercuts his observational shots of these passionate group discussions with atmospheric impressions of campus life full of commotion.

In the years that Kassanda films, from 2019 to 2021, students and their peers take to the barricades to resist police violence—there were even deaths at these protests in October 2020. This film, which shared the top prize at Cinéma du Réel, is a dynamic portrait of a generation of Nigerians using their intelligence and critical thinking to demand change.

Q&A

After the screening, the filmmakers will join us on stage for a short Q&A with the audience.

Altijd als eerste op de hoogte van onze programmering, De Balie podcasts, Tv fragmenten en de nodige verdieping.

Australian Jordan Bryon, an experienced journalist and filmmaker, had been in Afghanistan for five years when the Americans withdrew from the country in 2021 and the Taliban took power.

This transition more or less coincided with his own physical changes: as a trans man, he started taking testosterone injections and was awaiting surgery. For a report for The New York Times, Bryon gains access to a Taliban unit. While he films with them and is accepted as a man among men, he struggles with the moral implications of his choices.

If he were to reveal his trans identity, it would endanger him irrevocably. At the same time, not being honest about it feels like cheating. The Taliban’s acceptance of him is also confusing because it leads him to feel sympathy for them, when because of their ideas he should feel only hatred and fear. Transition is a film full of paradoxes that offers a glimpse into the exceptional life of a trans man.

After the screening, Jordan Bryon joins us on stage with the famous Dutch journalist Thomas Erdbrink to discuss the effects filming can have on the lives of people in sensitive positions who live in conflict-affected regions.

Speakers

Monica VillamizarCo-Director and journalist

Farzad FetratVideographer

Thomas ErdbrinkJournalist

Photo: Neil Brandvold

Altijd als eerste op de hoogte van onze programmering, De Balie podcasts, Tv fragmenten en de nodige verdieping.

Argentinian wedding videographer Leandro Koch has absolutely no interest in his Jewish background until he falls in love with clarinetist Paloma Schachmann. She specializes in klezmer music, the traditional Yiddish wedding music of Eastern Europe. They decide to make a documentary together, visiting the last European practitioners of this genre. Their wanderings through Ukraine, Romania, and Moldavia are mostly fruitless, with the Jewish presence limited to old photos and painful memories.

Koch and Schachmann intertwine their personal journey with a folktale about two lovers who defy Jewish traditions, and music historian Rob Cohen explains why after the Second World War the language of the klezmer tradition—Yiddish—gave way to Hebrew, the language of the Zionists. In this way, The Klezmer Project also becomes a requiem for a neglected language and a semi-forgotten culture.

Throughout the film, many local folk musicians incorporate elements of the klezmer tradition in their repertoire, but real Klezmer is almost not to be found. This is why we decided to complement this beautiful and warm cinematic journey into the lost history of Klezmer with a concert of genuine music in the genre, performed exclusively for De Balie audience by the Amsterdam Klezmer Band.

Line-up

Jasper de Beer – Double bass, guitar banjo, backing vocals
Job Chajes – Alto saxophone, Vocals
Alec Kopyt – Vocals, percussion
Gijs Levelt – Trumpet
Joop van der Linden – Trombone, percussion
Janfie van Strien – Clarinet, backing vocals
Theo van Tol – Accordion

Altijd als eerste op de hoogte van onze programmering, De Balie podcasts, Tv fragmenten en de nodige verdieping.

Gerlach van Beinum is one of the last old-school crop farmers in the Netherlands. Surrounded by the advancing exponents of modernity—distribution centers, highways, multinationals – he moves through the seasons at his own pace. We follow him for several years in his fields on the outskirts of Amsterdam.

With the help of his best friend Rinus, he grows potatoes, beetroot, grain, and strawberries, which he sells from his barn. In between these activities, his farmhouse proves to be a gathering spot for neighbors and friends, who share with him their dry wit and simple joy.

Meanwhile, the outside world imposes itself more and more blatantly, in the form of money-hungry entrepreneurs, the municipal government, aircraft noise, the neighboring McDonald’s and a failed harvest due to climate change. But Gerlach doggedly continues: with the help of his brothers, he conducts lawsuits—with occasional success—and sows new crops.

Aliona van der Horst and Luuk Bouwman portray the unflappable, stooped-over farmer with the same dedication and love with which he works his land, sometimes in close-up, sometimes in beautifully composed shots of the shadow he casts on his beloved field.

The screening is followed by an in-depth conversation with Aliona, Luuk and Gerlach himself about the possibility of conducting the “green transition” in a just way.

While in the US the right to freedom of the press is firmly enshrined in its constitution, this is not the case within most Native American tribes. Media outlets are often financed by the tribal governments themselves, which like to see current events portrayed in a favourable light to dispel prejudice and uphold their image.

Among the Muscogee Nation in Oklahoma, a number of journalists are struggling to be able to do their work independently; they don’t just want to report on beauty pageants and successful entrepreneurs.

Reporter Angel Ellis of Mvskoke Media fights for her job in a turbulent soap opera replete with corrupt, power-hungry officials, featuring the disputed elections of a new chief—whereby the extraordinary situation arises that the journalists have a personal interest in the election of a chief who wants to see press freedom included in the constitution. Will they manage to cover the elections objectively and in the future be able to provide their fellow citizens with independent information?

After the film, we are joined on stage by one of the directors of the film, Joe Peeler, for an in-depth conversation on the challenges of portraying this unique Native American struggle on screen.

Speakers

Joe PeelerDirector

Altijd als eerste op de hoogte van onze programmering, De Balie podcasts, Tv fragmenten en de nodige verdieping.

Young guys in Belarus look ahead to their term of military service with a sense of dread. They know what’s awaiting them in the army: they will be harassed, bullied and beaten by the older soldiers. Motherland shows how this culture of brutality is used to control an entire population, and how it robs the younger generation of any prospects for the future.

Svetlana’s son will never be able to tell her about his experiences as a conscript. Suicide was the official cause of death, but the wounds on his body tell a different story. To uncover the truth, Svetlana joins forces with other mothers of young conscripts who died during military service. 

Nikita and his friends try to escape this oppressive reality at clandestine raves. But the party could be over at any time. Just as Nikita is drafted, demonstrations against the rigged re-election of Alexander Lukashenko break out, and he’s deployed to help crush the protests. Suddenly, he has become part of a repressive system whose only goal is to violently quash any hope for change.

After the film, we are joined on stage by the filmmakers Hanna Badziaka and Alexander Mihalkovich for an in-depth discussion about the current political situation in Belarus, its implications on the geopolitical landscape and the influence it has on the lives of young and creative people of Belarus.

Speakers

Hanna BadziakaDirector

Alexander MihalkovichDirector

Altijd als eerste op de hoogte van onze programmering, De Balie podcasts, Tv fragmenten en de nodige verdieping.

Why would you travel to a war zone if you didn’t have to? Maybe because you need an adrenaline kick? Rick from the US couldn’t get into the military, so he came up with his own alternative. He set up a company, War Zone Tours, to organize trips to conflict areas.

Andrew Drury from the UK has been making similar trips for years. He travels around Somalia with AJ, a young man who seems barely aware of the life-threatening nature of the situations he’s voluntarily getting himself into. Eleonora from Los Angeles visits Afghanistan hoping for a “raw, real, and rough” experience—the opposite of what she has at home.

At first, war seems like an exciting game to her, a way to escape an empty life. But once she gets there, she talks about how scary she finds violence. Images of bloody attacks back up her stories. As viewers, we become travel companions with the dual role of voyeur and participant. A smart road film revealing what a luxury it is to know war as merely a spectacle.

After the film the audience is invited to join a longer conversation with Vita Drygas about her views on filming war-torn areas and Andrew Drury about his peculiar occupation, the motives behind it and his moral rationale.

Speakers

Vita Maria DrygasDirector

Eleonora GiulianiDanger tourist

Kamiran SadounNews fixer and producer

Altijd als eerste op de hoogte van onze programmering, De Balie podcasts, Tv fragmenten en de nodige verdieping.

Een film over de fotograaf Paul Blanca, een internationaal gevierd kunstenaar die in New Yorkse kunstkringen triomfen kende en bevriend was met Robert Mapplethorpe, Keith Haring en Richard Gere. Maar alles stopte toen Rob Scholte hem ten onrechte in 1995 ervan beschuldigde de bom onder zijn auto te hebben geplaatst. Blanca werd daarmee de eerste gecancelde kunstenaar van Nederland; musea, galerieën en verzamelaars verbraken alle contacten en zijn kunstenaarschap werd ondermijnd.

Blanca overleed op 62-jarige leeftijd na een leven van drugs- en alcoholgebruik. In een mogelijk vergeefse poging een wegkwijnend leven te behoeden voor een roemloze ondergang, filmde Ramón Gieling Paul Blanca in zijn laatste maanden. Door middel van de camera zijn we getuige van Blanca’s worsteling tegen de vergankelijkheid van zijn lichaam en het onverbiddelijke verstrijken van de tijd.

Daarnaast schetst de film Paul Blanca door de ogen van de mensen om hem heen. Erwin Olaf, Hans van Manen, Koos van Breukel, Wim van Sinderen, Henk Schiffmacher en zijn partner Louise van Teylingen, Benno Vlaswinkel, zijn levensgezellin Marlies Jongsma, Cees Dam, Rob Malasch en Hans Kemna spreken voor het eerst openlijk over dit vergeten Nederlandse kunstenaars icoon.

Lina’s plan was eenvoudig. Ze wilde cameravrouw worden. Ze hield van het filmen van details van het leven en de mensen om haar heen, vooral tijdens een zonnige dag in Damascus. Maar met de opstand in Syrië ging Lina langzaam over op het vastleggen van de impact op het leven van de bevolking.

Het duurde niet lang voordat gebeurtenissen escaleerden en arrestaties, martelingen en potentieel levensbedreigende situaties voor Lina dagelijkse realiteit werden. Ze moest zich aanpassen. Ze bedacht personages en pseudoniemen. Die hielpen haar haar leven te leiden onder een nieuwe norm.

Wat een eenvoudig plan was, veranderde in een complex web van identiteiten, wat op dat moment een kleine prijs leek in ruil voor haar vrijheid om de camera vast te houden.