Laura Poitras will be honoured at #IDFA this November with the Retrospective and Top 10 programs. Two curated focus programs, «Around Masculinity» and «Playing Reality», were also announced, in addition to the IDFA DocLab theme of «Nervous Systems». The 35th edition of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam takes place in person from November 9 to 20, 2022.
In the «Retrospective» section, IDFA presents all seven films directed by Poitras from 2003 to today. In celebration of the filmmaker, the festival will hold a public master talk with Poitras and IDFA’s artistic director #Orwa Nyrabia# in Amsterdam’s historic Pathé Tuschinski cinema. The program includes reflections on political imprisonment (Hunger by Steve McQueen; This is Not a Film by Jafar Panahi and Mojtaba Mirtahmasb), incarceration and psychiatry (Frederick Wiseman’s Titicut Follies), and genocide (Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah).
«Around Masculinity» interrogates the problematic social construct that is masculinity from a variety of perspectives. The curated section homes in on a blind spot in film history, inviting audiences to take a hard look at their heroes by re-reading classics such as Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams and the Maysles Brothers’ Meet Marlon Brando. Fragility comes to the fore in Heddy Honigmann’s Crazy, as do the inherent paradoxes of masculinity in Pirjo Honkasalo’s The 3 Rooms of Melancholia. Elsewhere in the program, Anand Patwardan’s Father, Son and Holy War take up the subject through its relation to religion and nationalism, while lesser-seen titles such as Bitch Academy by Alina Rudnitskaya turn to the institutional domination of women by men.
«Playing Reality» brings the drama of documentary film center stage, the titles in this focus program creatively reimagine the concept of theatricality. Clio Bernard’s The Arbor, on renowned playwright Andrea Dunbar, foregrounds the performativity of language and voice. Werner Herzog’s Little Dieter Needs to Fly iconically uses re-enactment as a documentary film instrument, while Lola Arias’ Theatre of War experiments with mise-en-scène as its protagonists revisit memories of the Falklands War. Eduardo Coutinho’s Moscow, on the other hand, deals directly with the physical space of the theater.
With the theme «Nervous Systems»s, IDFA’s new media section returns to the heart of Amsterdam. Referring playfully to our nervous systems—both inside the body and in the reality that surrounds us—the program focuses on experiential storytelling through different senses, art forms, and technologies.
Find more information – HERE
