SHOP
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SHOP |
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Except
for in-house productions, People and Places
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DONGBA - CHINA'S FORGOTTEN PRIESTS Dongba is the name of the religious cult of the Naxi, an ethnic minority in the province Yunnan in Southwest China. Their claim to cultural uniqueness is the last hieroglyphic script left in the world which can still be written and read. Hitherto unknown to the West, the Naxi Dongba cult was discovered in the 1920s by the Austrian-born explorer Joseph Rock, who wrote the first scientific studies on a culture which later during the Cultural Revolution would almost be extinguished. Today there only a handful of Naxi priests left who can perform the rituals and read and write the Dongba script. In the middle of the 1980s, the newly-founded Institute of Dongba Culture in Lijiang asked the surviving priests to help in the translation of the remaining texts into Mandarin, of which the institute had collected more than 6,500. The film delves into the Dongba cult of the Naxi from Lijiang and presents a world on the brink of extinction. It tells the story of Rock's discovery of the culture and looks back to the years that Rock spent among the Naxi, before the Communist destruction tore the country apart. The film centres around a special Dongba ceremony performed to appease the demons of love suicide. In old Naxi society the custom of love suicide was common. If one had been promised in marriage and yet loved another, one would take one's own life rather than live in unhappiness. The souls of these people became angry demons who would wander over the earth causing mischief and disasters: animals would become ill, crops would not grow and other people would be driven to commit love suicide or would find another violent end. To prevent these latest victims from also becoming demons, a ceremony would have to be held for them so that they could enter the ancestral kingdom. Only in this way were the dead able to rest and the living continue to live in peace. The film poses the question of the survival of the Naxi Dongba cult and looks at the attempts of the last remaining priests to save their culture. The recent western interest in the Naxi script and traditions has promoted a new anthropological awareness of the Naxi in the People's Republic of China. But can the religion survive the pressures of the commercial and modern world? Although a few young people have taken it upon themselves to become Dongba priests, with an apprenticeship of up to ten years it is unsure whether the Naxi Dongba cult can be handed down in time and continue to exist. Director: Paul Benjamin
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A KING IN CHINA Joseph Francis Rock, botanist, anthropologist and explorer extraordinaire, was born in Vienna in 1884. As a contemporary of Scott, Shackleton and Flaherty, this versatile and energetic scientist became legendary first as a botanist in Hawaii, studying the native flora and creating Hawaii's first herbarium, and later as a geographer and anthropologist in China. His legacy to the world was enormous. Not only did he introduce thousands of different plant species to the United States and Europe, often grown by him from seeds he had collected, but he also put together an invaluable archive of photographs and film about life in pre-communist Southwest China and the traditions of the Naxi people of Yunnan province. His collection of original documents and scripts and his two volume dictionary of the Dongba pictographic script, as well as his writings on Naxi religion and history, remain a lasting record and tribute to a people whose religion has now all but vanished. Gifted with a phenomenal memory and a remarkable linguistic ability, Rock overcame his background disadvantages and poor health and devoted his life to the exploration of foreign lands. Rock's story is one of success, but not always one of happiness. He was a complicated and difficult man, unable to form intimate relationships, preferring instead to remain aloof. In America and Europe he would thrill society with his tales of daring and adventure and he was admired for realising his dreams, but in living them out he was to find that dreams can be empty things. In China his desire for power forced him into isolation and loneliness. The paradox was that he could only enter the world he longed to be part of in the guise of adventurer and conquering hero, which forced him inevitably to set off on ever more adventures. But the conditions under which he lived were hard - in his diaries he complains again and again of the difficulties he must endure. Wherever he went in the world he remained an outsider. Perhaps he found his greatest peace in his love of the Naxi tribespeople amongst whom he lived and studied. This film is the portrait of an extraordinary man who explored regions never before seen by Europeans. Even today many of these areas remain inaccessible to foreigners. He arrived in China at a unique moment in history as the doors were briefly opened. With his photographs and film he created an unparalleled visual documentation of life in western China. And he dedicated himself to the culture and religion of the Naxi people from Lijiang, creating an awareness of their culture for the first time in the West. Rock lived in wild and troubled provinces in a chaotic nation, witnessing civil wars, tribal wars, provincial wars, a world war, and a national revolution, not to mention the random savagery of bandits who plundered the Chinese countryside. For the first time this film tells the story of one of the last classic explorers of the 20th century, Joseph Francis Rock, botanist, geographer and cultural scientist. Director: Paul
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END OF THE WAR IN COLOGNE 1945 The capture of
Cologne filmed by US soldiers partly in colour - tank fight at the
Cathedral - the first 100 days of US occupation - Cologne before the war Distribution:
Koelnprogramm
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EUROPEAN AWARD WINNERS 8 Award-Winning European Short Films from the cinema label "NIGHT OF THE SHORTS". Awards include an OSCAR®, the Jury Award of the Cannes Film Festival, and the European Short Film Prize...
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Adrian
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NIGHT OF THE SHORTS - VOLUME I 7 Short Films from the cinema label "NIGHT OF THE SHORTS"
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Eine
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