Not Reconciled wins A Special Mention by the Jury at the Festival de cine De Granada.
http://www.mamut.net/festivalesdecine/newsdet4.htm
The Last Happy Day and Not Reconciled : Two Films About History and Memory.
Showtime: Saturday, April 24, 5:15 pm, Athena Cinema Films shown in this competition show:The Last Happy Day Director: Lynne Sachs 38 min. U.S.A.During WWII, the US Army Graves Registration Service hired the filmmaker’s Hungarian cousin, Dr. Sandor Lenard, to reconstruct the bones — small and large — of dead American soldiers. This half-hour experimental documentary work, which resonates as an anti-war meditation, is composed of excerpts of Sandor’s letters to Sachs’ family, abstracted war imagery, home movies of children at a birthday party, and interviews.
Not Reconciled Director: Jill Daniels 40 min. United Kingdom. Throughout Spain there are many unmarked mass graves full of victims of executions during the civil war and after. Rosa and Carlos, the voices of ghosts of young Spanish civil war republicans, roam the ruins of Belchite in Northern Spain, waiting for the discovery of their own unmarked graves.http://www.athensfest.org/film/last_happy_day_not_reconciled
Not Reconciled has been accepted for the Festival du Film de Strasbourg as part of the Annual Program Without Frontiers. See http://www.strasbourg.festivalinfo.org/ for more details.
Greek nationalists are busy abusing me on the You Tube Q&A. see below for link. Unfortunately most of it is racist and incoherently childish. For a more supportive discussion see MakNews website onhttp://www.maknews.com/forum/post252906.html?sid=bacd16e712c5b84fb64cffa7ed35041d
Please do give your views. I would love to hear from Greek people who are willing to talk more deeply about the problems of refugees from the Greek civil war in 1948, who I believe have the right to identify themselves as Macedonian or Greek if they choose, and to have the freedom to enter Greece freely to visit their old villages, towns and homes.
Next Year in Lerin screened to a full house on Saturday 24th October at the Hot Springs Documentary Festival near Little Rock, Arkansas. There was a great discussion afterwards.
See the Q&A on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3MWw4o9QkAA.
The Macedonian festival in Melbourne will take place without Next Year in Lerin because the cinema was pulled from under them and the new venue only has 35mm facilities. It is hoped it will be shown at an alternative venue either now or some time in the future.
Not Reconciled will be screened at the DokBazaar International Short Film Festival, Ljubljana and Iasi International Film Festival in Romania on September 30th
http://www.iasifilmfest.ro/program.aspx?day=30&month=9&year=2009 for details
News just out that the BFI could be merged with the Film Council thus creating the final nail in the coffin for oppositional film-making in the UK. See this link for details and analysis by Michael Chanan.
http://putneydebater.wordpress.com/2009/08/22/end-of-the-bfi-as-we-know-it/
Next Year in Lerin was shown in Brussels in April courtesy of the Macedonian Ambassador to the EU. Perhaps it will help in the struggle to allow Macedonians born in Greece exiled in the civil war, back to visit their former homes in Greece.
The Preview Screening of Not Reconciled
starring Judith Mora Toral and Jose Antonio Garcia was packed. Afterwards there was a fascinating discussion about the legacy of the Spanish civil war and uncovering of the mass graves of victims of the war, and the way the film combined ‘real’ people with fictional.