FICMA'08

DISCOURS D’EAU (EN DIX COURTS)

34min - CANADA

Director: Saël Gueyarn-Lacroix/ Frédéric Julien

DISCOURSES IN TEN SEGMENTS exposes the issues related to water management in Mexico and around the world through the scope of the civil unrest during the Fourth World Water Forum (WWF) that took place in Mexico City in 2006. That year, side by side with activists from around the world, the Mazahua, native peasants living next to the capital and dispossessed of their hydraulic resources, made their voices heard in protest against national and international policies on water.

PANCEVO - MARTAV GRAD

27min - SERBIA / ITALY

Director: Antonio Martino

The biggest industrial complex of the ex Yugoslavia is set in Pancevo. This city is also known as the most polluted in Europe. Nowadays, highest levels of benzene and other pollutant substances are registered. Meantime, the people of Pancevo are taken ill with cancer and the children crowd the hospital for chronic respiratory problems. But all this has not convinced the Serbian Government and Europe to find a solution to this problem.

TAMBOGRANDE: MANGOS, MUERTE, MINERIA

85 min - PERU

Director : Ernesto Cabellos / Stephane Boyd

A wave of pioneers transforms a desert into a fertile valley of mangos and lemons. Their great effort is threatened when a gold mine is discovered beneath the soil. Indignation, violence and an assassination disrupt what was once a quiet village in northern Peru.

CRY SEA

55 min - ITALY

Director: Cafi Mohamud / Luca Cusani

The European vessels have radars and GPS for detecting the stocks and can fish for two months with no interruption.The Senegalese fishermen try to detect the fish stocks by looking the movements of the water, the reflection of the moon on the scales and using special amulets provided by the spiritual guides of the villages. In ten years time, the experts say that there will be no more fish in the water of Senegal and there will be a human tragedy.

THE WATER FRONT

53min - USA

Director: Liz Miller

THE WATER FRONT is not just about water, but touches on the very essence of our democratic system. The film presents a community in crisis but it also presents the powerful enactment of local participation in finding solutions to the problems of our times.

KING CORN

90min - USA

Director: Aaron Woolf

King Corn is a feature documentary about two friends, one acre of corn, and the subsidized crop that drives our fast-food nation.

In King Corn, Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn where their food comes from.

'TIL THE RIVER RUNS CLEAR

30min - USA

Director: Karan Sim

Till The River Runs Clear, a half hour documentary, tells the story of America’s environmental flagship, the Clearwater, which has helped effect a remarkable grassroots transformation of the Hudson River over the last four decades. It’s a truly inspiring story.

LA GANGA

89min - ARGENTINA

Director: Lisandro Costa

This documentary deals with the large-scale mining industry in the Argentine Republic and the resulting desperate struggle of neighbours to stop the pollution of their air, water and land. Far-fetched laws and irrational treaties set the ideal framework for the corruption that perpetuates exploitation more than 500 years after the colonisation of the Americas.

LE PERE DI ADAMO

90min - ITALY / DENMARK / FRANCE / SWITZERLAND

Director: Guido Chiesa

Guido Chiesa directs a sort of essay in images that stars a meteorologist, Luca Mercalli; a Scottish teenager, math and music whiz; and an animated cartoon scientist. The result is a highly illuminating and stirring allegory that links weather disturbances to the sensibility of those living on this planet here and now.

EISENFRESSER

85min - GERMANY / BANGLADESH

Director: Shaheen Hill-Riaz

The annual flamine in northern Bangladesh forces farmers Kholil and Gadu along with several of their relatives to leave their homeland. They are going to work as seasonal labourers in the shipbreaking yards in the south. In the yards that line the beaches of Chittagong, they will dismantle the garbage of the Western World: oil tankes and vast containers ships.

LAST YOIK IN SAAMI FOREST?

59min - FINLAND

Director: Hannu Hyrónen

The heavy cuttings in forests of Finnish Lapland, even in indigenous Saami peoples home area have continued last fifty years.

The conflict between forestry and nature conservation has been constant during last 20 years.

KILOWATT OURS

58min - USA

Director: Jeff Barrie

Kilowatt Ours Reveals the Consequences of Our Coal Powered Economy.

The film opens with Vice President Dick Cheney's energy policy speech in which Cheney makes the claim that America needs nearly 1900 new power plants in the next 20 years to meet projected electricity demands.

CARBON CONNECTION

40min - UK / BRAZIL

Director: Fenceline Films

The Carbon Connection - New documentary examines the impact of carbon trading

Two communities affected by one new global market – the trade in carbon dioxide. In Scotland a town has been polluted by oil and chemical companies since the 1940s. In Brazil local people's water and land is being swallowed up by destructive monoculture eucalyptus tree plantations.

DELHI DUMP

27min - INDIA / SINGAPUR

Director: Chaitali

From the rag-picker to the coin-diver to the industrial worker, this documentary is a realistic and disturbing snapshot of the common man’s story that personalizes the issues of global warming.

AKI RA’S BOYS

57min - CAMBODJA / SINGAPUR

Director: James Leong/ Lynn Lee

Boreak was six when he lost his right arm in a landmine accident. Family members rushed the young Cambodian to a nearby hospital where so-called "doctors" performed a crude amputation.

FIELDS OF FUEL

95min - USA

Director: Josh Tickel

America’s addiction to oil has endangered the environment, taken the nation to war and

threatened our long-term stability. Driven by his own emotionally-charged motives,

filmmaker, author and environmentalist Josh Tickell shuttles us on a revelatory fast paced journey to unravel this addiction.

FLOW

93min - USA

Director: Irena Salina

An inspired, yet disturbingly provocative,wake-up call:our life-giving water is a resource in peril across the planet . The film highlights a global crisis on water politics, pollution and human rights and warns that water, the quintessence of life and our most precious resource, can no longer be taken for granted.

THE SOLAR POWER VILLAGE

25min - SPAIN

Director: Nigel Dickinson

The innovative model "Solar Power Village” is a multifunctional and technologic example of how can we learn from nature. It has a low cost, it is self-sustaining and it is a way to produce energy for the underdeveloped world.

VOSALTRES ELS BLANCS

54min - SPAIN

Director: Lala Gomá

Eria lives in the same school where he studies, plays with her schoolmates, quarrels and, when he can, he goes home to see his family, who live in a hut far from the boarding school,. Eria has never been to the city.

TEBRAA, RETRATOS DE MUJERES SAHARAUIS

60 min - SPAIN

Director: Beatriz Mateos, Chaska Mori, Dácil Pérez de Guzmán, laura Alvea, Raquel Conde, Mercedes Martínez and more directors.

Morocco has been over 30 years denying the land and the lives to the people of Western Sahara. In exile, the Saharawi women have become a fundamental pillar. They bring society together and keep alive struggle and resistance.

KARDALA

53min - SPAIN

Director: Juan Bidegan

KARDALA means, for the old Basque sailors, the pushing or the power given by the sea on the crest of the wave when it begins to break.

Over the centuries, our sailors and their boats had to endure and suffer the pounding of the wave breakers.

Such a force needs, day after day, the sailor’s wives to bring up their families.

CONSUMINT EL PLANETA

37min - SPAIN

Director: Esther Llauradó / Lourdes Guiteras

While for most economists and analysts to be indefinitely growing is the only possible formula, a new movement is expanding in many countries, and it is beginning here as well. It is a movement that proposes to stop the machine to save the planet, to seek alternatives to indefinite growth, tending to zero growth and the personal control of the costs.

HOY EL DIA SE REPITE DIFERENTE

98min - SPAIN

Director: Xavier Baig / Oscar Moreno

The documentary goes intensively behind Toni’s steps through his chaotic house, together with a dog that follows him everywhere and accompanied by an oxygen bomb that blows him the necessary air to keep moving.

LA PLAZA HABITADA

20min - SPAIN

Director: Rosario de la Varga Sánchez

A concert in the square. A meal in the street. The urban setting as a shared social space, as a place of coexistence that can be unpredictable. A Collective territory built for the people that have walked it, inhabited by dreams that beat in the heart of the neighborhood.

LA MAR DE SILENCIOS

56min - SPAIN / MOROCCO / MAURITANIA

Director: Yves Sadurni

From the Sahara desert to the first world big cities, the Sea of Silence narrates the process of desertification in our times, a planet phenomena linked to the climate change and the over exploitation of the land. It is a reflection from the ground up, interlinking four stories that show the efforts of human beings to survive in a hostile environment.

HARRAGA

20min - SPAIN / MOROCCO

Director: Eva Patricia / Mario de la Torre

"Harraga is an illegal immigrant who travels by land, sea and air. Always undocumented, without a paper or visa or passport. Outside the law. (...) Yes, that's the key, outside the law ...." but what happens when Harragas are the children?

RALCO, UN MAL NEGOCIO

50min - CHILE / SPAIN

Director: Nicolás García / Xavier Vaqué

In the Andes, Chile, the last indigenous “Pehuenche”"must leave their ancestral lands due to the construction of a gigantic hydroelectric dam, this is the story of some of its inhabitants.

EL DELTA NEGAT

33MIN - SPAIN

Director: Elisenda Trilla

The Deltas are always in motion; their form changes through time, cities that once were on the coast are presently located kilometers away from the sea.

STRIKE 2

5min - SPAIN

Director: Arturo Prins

One is never too tolerant. There is always someone more tolerant who is willing to prove it. Dedicated to all the immigrants that build the progress and welfare of Spain.

MANZANAS AZULES

8min - SPAIN

Director: Paco Ruiz

Two friends are engaged in a strange conversation about the possibility of not being alone in the universe. They imagine a world upside down, whose inhabitants live and behave in a manner contrary to everything they consider to be “normal”. But what they don’t think about is that perhaps they are the ones who live upside down.

KIGO

11 min - SPAIN

Director: Lluís Masachs

The passage of the seasons is a fact that develops silently, imperceptibly for most of the people. But throughout the cycle, there are a number of events that affect the entire natural process. This production takes a look at the world of nature, entering the thoughts of the seasons which, during their course, teach us to appreciate its beauty and its fragility.

BROKEBIKE MOUNTAIN

19 min - SPAIN

Director: Kilo Ruiz Claverol

Xavi, an urbanite tired and stressed out, decides to spend some days of rest and mountain biking in the village of his ancestors. There, he only finds an old man and full calm. But what it should be an idyllic stay it becomes a nightmare. Xavi seems unable to adapt to the new situation and the pace of the mountain.

DROP OF LIFE

16min - INDIA / USA

Director: Shalini Kantayya

Set in the near future, A DROP OF LIFE is the story of two women, a village teacher in rural India and an African American corporate executive, whose disparate lives intersect when they are both confronted with lack of access to clean drinking water.

MBEBEUS

15min - ITALY

Director: Simona Risi

Everyday waste from Dakar arrive in Mbeubeus dump. 1300 tons a day of materials of every kind: home rubbish, sanitary and industrial waste.

More than 2000 people live by the work in the dump: some of them collect items, some sell, others buy, repair or recycle them.

MYTHS ABOUT YOU

9min - INDIA

Director: Nandita Jain

The film is a journey through an unfamiliar space-time - and walks along the path that somewhere along the way threw up humans as a contingent outcome of the course it took. It talks about the evolution of life.

WARMING

4min - CANADA

Director: Collen Mc Isaac

Warming attempts to address the issue of climate change in a lyrical and visually contemplative manner. Focusing on the interconnected nature of the ecosystems and societies in which we live, it explores the causes and effects of global warming across the planet through an ever-shifting montage of painted watercolour images.

QUIERO SER TORTILLA

5min - SPAIN

Director: Eduard Puertas / Irene Porras

Panocha is a Mexican corncob who lives happily with a farmer and his pig. But the discovery of its transgenic identity will launch a series of unfortunate events that have disastrous consequences for all. Will Panocha accept submissive its scheduled destiny?

NICO & TINA

8min - SPAIN

Director: Rodolfo Pastor

Nico and Tina are two hardened smokers who are groomed for their loving appointment, imagining cheerful erotic fantasies while the tango lyrics “Fumando espero” celebrates the delights of tobacco and love. However, when Nico runs out of cigarettes and Tina of light, the meeting becomes a nightmare.

SUBSTANTIA

5min - SPAIN

Director: Mayec Rancel / José Angel Soto

A strange universe permanently crossed by destructive meteors, planets-heart eternally wander, lonely. But on rare occasions chance (or fate) leads them to find a tear, and then emerges life, and emerges an eternal story. A story that is many stories. A story whose end is the beginning. It is life. It is Substantia.

PADAM

12min - SPAIN

Director: José Manuel Carrasco

Pilar does not want to be alone, so she goes to a Dating Agency that arranges a blind date for her. What Pilar does not know is that her date has other interests that have nothing to do with hers…

NIÑOS QUE NUNCA EXISTIERON

20min - SPAIN

Director: David Valero Simón

Somewhere in the African continent, Alí and Haytham, two brothers, 12 and 8 years old, run away to the mountains to begin a new life in complete loneliness. They take refuge in a cave escaping a war that they have not chosen to live.

EL LIBRO TALONARIO

18min - SPAIN

Director: Gonzalo Merat

The central character, a “mayeto roteño”, is a smallholder farmer with little water to cultivate his sandy lands, but with a capacity for work such that, after three years of watering with a small jug, his spine has developed an almost impossible stoop.

EL PAN NUESTRO

19min - SPAIN

Director: Aitor Merino

Andres and Elena arrive in Quito and they are welcomed by a man who takes them to a hotel. “He tells them to be discreet. Elena, very scared, confesses to Andres her doubts. He tries to calm her down, but reminds her that… there is no way back”.

NATACHA

12min - SPAIN

Director: Antonio Bertolo

Natacha makes herself up in front of a window while recalls through other windows several moments of her life. From the window of her hometown shanty dwelling, she saw somebody approaching who promised her a better world. From the window of a van she realized she had fallen into the trap.

CIELO SIN ANGELES

13min - SPAIN

Director: Laura Aluza / José Fco Ortuño

Alex is a different guy, who does not fit in his environment, a world obsessed by the cult of health and body. Left aside by the others, despised even by his girlfriend, he eventually learns that in this society he pays dearly for being “different”.

COLUMBA PALUMBUS

4min -SPAIN

Director: Koldo Almandoz

Sometimes it has occurred that homing pigeons lose their course and lead the other pigeons towards the wrong direction. The entire flock becomes disoriented, and finally all dye, exhausted by an unreasonable flight.

UNA FOSA COMUN

4min - SPAIN

Director: Izibine Onederra

Hezurbeltzak is a Basque word which does not appear in any dictionary. An inexistent word to name contemptuously groups of people who are socially invisible. Translated literally: “black bones”.

ATENCION AL CLIENTE

8min - SPAIN

Director: Marcos Valín / David Alonso

In a cold and hostile future, a grandmother will be forced to skip the rules to get something to throw into the stomach of her squalid dog. Metalized security guards, compulsive and unbridled buyers, and paranoid security measures will be the obstacles that she will have to face during her vandalistic feat…

EL ATAQUE DE LOS KRITTERS ASESINOS

10min - SPAIN

Director: Samuel Ortí Martí

Luisa, a disappointed mother and housewife, is waiting for the imminent visit of her mother-in-law. She doubts whether to clean and pick up the house or watching a marathon of her favourite soap opera. Her regrettable decision will drive her home to an extreme state of neglect, as she is incapable of turning the TV off.

WHALE RIDER

An ancient Maori legend tells that Paikea fled his native town on board of a canoe, in search of a new land in which to live in peace. Owing to a great storm, one of those that only occur in legends, Paikea’s canoe capsized and he was left at the mercy of the vast sea. When he was about to die, a whale rescued him. On top of her back, he reached the west coast of New Zealand, founding the village of Whang, where it grew the Maori lineage of the Whale Riders, and he became his chief.

VECINOS INVASORES

Spring has come and Verne and his friends from the forest awaken from their long winter nap and discover a large green hedge crossing their natural habitat. RJ, an opportunistic raccoon, explains to his friends that the world on the other side of the hedge is "the gateway to the good life", a place inhabited by some peculiar creatures called "human beings" , who live to eat, instead of eating to live. "Human beings -declares RJ- never have enough." Distrustful, even a little jealous of RJ, the ever-cautious Verne wants her mixed community to keep within their side of the hedge for safety. But as the saying goes, what is trash for a man, it can be a treasure for another one -or an animal-.

PIPSQUEACK AND THE PLANET

In this series, Pipsqueak is dedicated to solving environmental problems by helping to improve the natural environment and ensure that future generations can also enjoy our planet. These are 3 minute videos that bring us closer to the everyday actions that have to do with the environment. In these chapters PIPSQUEACK teach us:

Saving water, Recycle, to look after our garden and to eat healthy.

Global Nuff Section

JONATHAN BROWN AND THE LOST PENGUIN

13min - AUSTRALIA

Climate change is already a reality; ask Jonathan, who has found a penguin lost due to the thaw. Jonathan realizes that it is time to act.

THE LAST BOY RIDING

17min - PHILIPPINES

While everybody goes to work by car, Rene uses a very special vehicle and, above all, very ecological.

FROM THE CAMP

15min - PALESTINE

Winner of the 2nd Global Nuff Prize, this documentary explains the lives of a group of Palestinian refugees in Gaza Strip, a place where the sea level is becoming increasingly high.

THE FRIDGE

7min - CZECH REPUBLIC

A man forgets to close the door of the fridge and looks what it happens. Winner of the 1st Global Nuff Prize.

FACELESS

11min - NIGERIA

The sea level augment, extreme pollution, desertification of many places...

CENIZAS DEL CIELO

90min - SPAIN

Director: José Antonio Quirós

Valle Negrón is a place where the majority of its inhabitants live right beside the thermal power plant.

POL FERGUSON, a Scottish travel writer, arrives one day by chance. He expresses an interest in visiting a region in northern Spain that he has learned about from the media (namely, concerning a princess and a Formula 1 racecar driver).

THE GREEN CHAIN

90min - CANADA

Director: Mark Leiren-Young

The Green Chain is a powerful, funny and thought-provoking film about the conflicts between people on both sides of the battle who love trees -- and are willing to risk anything to protect their personal visions of the forest.

RECYCLED LIFE

38min - USA

Director: Leslie Iwerks

For more than 60 years, the Guatemala City Garbage Dump has been home to the "guajeros" who recycle the city's trash. Raising their families in the most toxic area in all of Central America, the guajeros were shunned by society and ignored by the government until January 2005 - when a devastating event changed the face of the landfill forever.

SAND AND SORROW

93min - USA

Director: Paul Freedman

Sand and sorrow details the historically tragic events in Dafur that have given rise to an Arab-dominated government's willingness to kill and displace its own indigenous African people, and examines the international community's "legacy of failure" to respond to such profound crimes against humanity in the past. To date, as many as 400,000 civilians in Darfur have perished from violence, starvation and disease.

THE PRICE OF SUGAR

90min - USA

Director: Hill Haney

As tourists flock to the pristine beaches of the Dominican Republic, little do they know that a few miles away thousands of dispossessed Haitians are under armed guard on plantations harvesting sugarcane, most of which ends up in US kitchens. Cutting cane by machete, they work 14 hour days, 7 days a week, frequently without access to decent housing, electricity, clean water, education, healthcare or adequate nutrition.

EARTHLINGS

95min - USA

Director: Shaun Monson

EARTHLINGS is a feature length documentary about humanity's absolute dependence on animals (for pets, food, clothing, entertainment, and scientific research) but also illustrates our complete disrespect for these so-called "non-human providers." The film is narrated by Academy Award nominee Joaquin Phoenix (GLADIATOR) and features music by the critically acclaimed platinum artist Moby.

SHARK WATER

89min - USA

Director: Rob Stewart

Driven by passion fed from a lifelong fascination with sharks, Stewart debunks historical stereotypes and media depictions of sharks as bloodthirsty, man-eating monsters and reveals the reality of sharks as pillars in the evolution of the seas.

BATTLE IN SEATTLE

100min - USA / CANADA / GERMANY

Director: Stuart Townsend

Cast: Charlize Theron, Woody HArrelson, Ray Liotta, Michelle Rodriguez, Joshua Jackson,

Sección Live Earth 2008

ALICE IS NOT SO WONDERLAND

2'49min

Director: Brothers Quay

From legendary stop-motion animators the Brothers Quay comes a dark and surreal variation on "Alice in Wonderland," in which our puppet heroine suddenly finds herself on the other side of the looking glass, witnessing nightmarish scenes.

COUGH, COLD AND HIGH FEVER

4'44min

Director: Jason Archer i Paul Beck

This animated film features the earth as the “hero” suffering an asthma attack as an SUV drives past.

DON'T LET IT ALL UNRAVEL

1'30min

Director: Sarah Cox

A simple and striking animated film depicting the world as knitting, which slowly unravels over 90 seconds to nothing.

FORLORN

8'58min

Director: Chris Hawkes i Chuen Hung Tsang

An animated story of a solitary explorer searching through a city that has been destroyed by a hurricane, looking for objects that remind him of his past life. He imagines the world gradually returning to how he remembers it.

GRIDLOCK

3'04min

Director: Darren Walsh

Aardman's beloved Angry Kid is back in this adventure taking place in the back of his dad’s car. The car is in a gridlock made up of SUV’s. A comedy rap ensues.

H2 UH-OH

5'07min

Director: Matt Mahurin

Set in the near future, one mans journey from a world that is flooded to a world that has no water at all.

LORRAN E GE

8'14min

Director: Casey Affleck

An uplifting look a group of children living in the slums who create a cleaner, more beautiful world to play in with their imaginations.

ONE LESS CAR

5'46min

Director: Heidi Ewing i Rachel Grady

This documentary featuring cyclists in New York City.

PENGUIN IN A PICKLE

3'26min

Director: Alex Maclean

A cartoon about a penguin dealing with climate change in the North Pole..

PICTURES

4'37min

Director: Patrick Cadell

A child chooses images that reflect choices of lifestyle and habit.

POLARBEARMAN

4'39min

Director: Big TV

A man struggles to survive as his house becomes taken over by water against the backdrop of a wildlife documentary commentary about polar bears.

ROUND AND ROUND

3'19min

Director: Suzanne Deakin

An animated film, highlighting the cycle of bad habits that consume our daily lives.

SUNNY DAY

3'10min

Director: Sophie Muller

A beautiful stylistic piece encouraging the people of Los Angeles to ditch the tumble dryer and encourage use of the eco-friendly washing line instead.

SWITCH ON. SWITCH OFF

2'22min

Director: Chris Bran

A rhythmically graphic exploration of what switching off and on a simple everyday switch means in global terms.