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Claas Danielsen, the new director of the 47th Leipzig International Festival for Documentary and Animation Films (19-24 October 2004), together with his team, have met the challenge and stood the test. Indeed, with an audience of over 24,000, an increase of 30 % over last year, they should be more than pleased. The turnout was particularly strong for the new section: a welcomed German Documentary Competition. As for the International Animation Competition, this too saw every program (as usual) packed to the brim, thanks to the programming finesse of Otto Alder. This year’s Golden Dove for Animation was awarded to Chris Landreth’s outstanding Ryan (Canada). Ryan Larkin, whose Walking (1968) had once been nominated for an Oscar, is today a social case, a gentleman panhandler, so to speak. In his 14-minute portrait Chris Landreth aptly demonstrates how closely animation and documentary interlink with one another. Landreth also pays homage to his prominent colleague, a great artist and one of the pioneers of Canadian animation, in a personal tribute imbued with love, friendship, and sadness.

Cineastes could enjoy the festival’s patented retrospective treats. »Volker Koepp: People and Landscapes,« in particular, was a highlight not to be missed. Organized by the Bundesarchiv/Filmarchiv (German Film Archive), the retro embraced all his documentaries from 1973 to the present under the rubric »Films from Wittstock to Czernowitz.« Der Wittstock-Zyklus (1975-1997), a cycle of seven interlocking documentaries, chronicled the life and times of female workers in a textile factory just north of Berlin that had employed up to two thousand young women during GDR times. As for Koepp’s awarded Czernowitz documentary, Herr Zwilling und Frau Zuckermann (1999), photographed by Thomas Plenert, it’s a poignant portrait of an elderly pair who had witnessed horrific events during the war. Unfortunately, the documentaries in this retro were not translated into English, in contrast to other entries either translated into English or already possessing English subtitles ­ a big win, to say the least! Another retrospective highlight was »Carte Blanche / Fred Gehler,« a tribute to the programming director of DOKfilm Leipzig over the past ten years. In his series Gehler focused on some legendary personalities in the field ­ for example, Luis Buñuel’s L’age d’or (France, 1930), one of Gehler’s favorite filmmakers. He also throws light on some unknown chapters in the history of the DOKfestival ­ how many Leipzig faithful would remember Lutz Dammbeck’s L’Hommage à la Serraz (GDR, 1982), a documentary that had celebrated an unauthorized premiere in the Casino Kino?

An armful of prizes were deservedly awarded to Katarina Peters’s Am seidenden Faden (Stroke) (Germany). It received a Silver Dove, the Ecumenical Prize, the FIPRESCI (International Critics) Award, and the Youth Jury Award. When the young musician Boris Baberkoff suffered a severe stroke, his wife ­ Katarina Peters ­ had the strength to remain at his side. Her survival strategy was to make use of a video DV camera as a diary. Thus Stroke is a film that radiates courage. The Golden Dove was awarded to Thomas Riedelsheimer’s Touch the Sound (Germany/UK), a portrait, yet much more, of the fascinating and talented percussionist Evelyn Glennie, a woman who is almost completely deaf. One can not only hear sounds, she says, but also feel them ­ and this in the city of Johann Sebastian Bach! This exceptional documentary about a deaf sound artist who uses what she calls her »sixth sense« ­ her body as a resonating space ­ to replace her lack of hearing will be showcased shortly in the Academy of Fine Arts in Berlin.

As for other awarded entries, Über die Grenze ­ Fünf Ansichten von Nachbarn (Across the Border ­ Five Views from Neighbors) scored as a genuinely entertaining compilation of short films by Central European filmmakers in five new EU member-states (Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Slovenia). As a collective two-hour statement from the respective countries the directors (Pawl Lozinski, Jan Gogola, Peter Kerekes, Robert Lakatos, Biljana Cakic-Veselic) touch on such »border topics« as political exiles, prostitutes, asylum seekers, tramps, customs inspectors, and drug-dealers to create a common meaningful »European film« woven from autonomous vignettes that reflect individual concerns. Across the Border was awarded two prizes: the Golden Dove for Best Short Documentary (as a series) and the MDR (Mitteldeutscher Rundfunk) Film Prize.

From Korea came one of the festival’s most memorable entries: Hosup Lee’s And Thereafter (USA/Republic of Korea), awarded the Silver Dove for Best Long Documentary, ex aequo with Stroke. The story of a South Korean war bride, one of ten thousand who married GIs shortly after the Korean conflict, the candid 76-year old Young-Ja Wike looks back on a scarred family history: an unfaithful and abusive husband and grown children who only visit when they need money. A shattering story of a wartime destiny, And Thereafter sensitively depicts a broken life from a frank perspective ­ a penetrating psychogram. The pulse of North Korea was taken in Pieter Fleury’s North Korea, A Day in the Life (Netherlands). Here the Great Leader, Kim Jong Il, is seen and heard everywhere in the life of a worker at a textile factor as though his presence is an entirely »normal« function of living and working! And in Dong-Won Kim’s Repatriation (Republic of Korea) the director, known as the godfather of independent Korean filmmakers, has documented over a stretch of some twelve years the lives of two North Koreans, who, as political prisoners, had spent 30 years in a South Korean prison on a charge of espionage. Refusing to submit to a »program of conversion,« they were eventually repatriated to North Korea in 2000.

A pity that Orzu Shapirov’s Runaways (Tajikistan), shot with a video camera, was overlooked by the international jury. The story of Afghan villagers who are forced to flee the bombing in the north to take refuge on uninhabited islands on the Pianj River bordering Tadjikistan, these refugees have witnessed the destruction of their homes and are now barely existing without a roof over their heads. Carrying everything they have in sacks on their backs and on donkeys, their exodus is across arid deserts and flooded rivers. In their faces, and those of their children, you can sense the helplessness of their situation and an incomprehension of the reasons for their ordeal. A documentary without dialogue or commentary, the message in Runaways is written on the harsh wind that has driven them to this precarious perch in a hostile landscape.

Dorothea Holloway