COLCOA.doc
In keeping with the continuing popularity of COLCOA documentary features, four films will compete for the 2014 COLCOA Best Documentary Award, including two César nominated films and the winner of the 2014 César for Best Documentary.
Tuesday, April 22
TRUFFAUT THEATRE - 5:30 PM
FLORE
In this inspiring and intensely personal documentary, filmmaker Jean-Albert Lièvre confronts his mother’s Alzheimer’s disease. At first, Flore is placed in secure, prison-like facilities and medicated to a state of near-stupor. Watching her condition steadily decline, Lièvre, heartbroken and desperate, takes Flore out of the institution in a wheelchair and installs her in a house in Corsica. There, surrounded by the sea, the sun and the wind, and no longer medicated, she begins to walk, smile and even paint again. Chronicling Flore’s life over three years, he learns that the debilitating condition is not something you die with, it’s something you live with. What began with a cell phone camera recording the negative effects of drugs, became a touching film about hope, about recovering dignity, and ultimately, about a son’s gratitude.
Wednesday, April 23
TRUFFAUT THEATRE - 5:30 PM
STOP-OVER (L'Escale)
A modest Athens apartment has become a terminal of lost souls to a steady influx of illegal Iranian immigrants seeking transit to a better life in the West. Hosted by the generous Amir, himself an immigrant, these shipwrecked men and women are marooned in a dehumanizing limbo while they try to obtain the forged documents and smuggler contacts that will allow them safe passage to their ultimate destinations. Most started out able-bodied, educated and with some means, but false promises and outright swindles have left them stranded in a hostile situation where a trip to the grocery store could cost them their freedom, or even their lives. Filmmaker Kaveh Bakhtiari went underground with nothing but a digital camera to make an intimate portrait of Amir, the boarding house “Papa” who watches over his flock of economic refugees.
Thursday, April 24
TRUFFAUT THEATRE - 5:30 PM
HOW I CAME TO HATE MATH (Comment j’ai détesté les maths)
For most people the words “math” and “exciting” don’t go together. In fact for some they might as well be words from different languages. How I Came To Hate Math takes a humorous look at math’s apparent ability to repel en masse and suggests that the haters are giving the numbers racket a bum rap. Olivier Peyon interviews math celebrities from around the world, including Cédric Villani, winner of math’s Nobel Prize, the Fields Medal in 2010, Stanford University Professor George Papanicolaou, and mathematician/hedge fund manager Jim Simons. With engaging stories and simple explanations, these experts reveal that math is not only central to our technology and our economy – it’s the invisible clockwork behind our lives. But a word of warning, you just might come away thinking math is exciting.
Sunday, April 27
TRUFFAUT THEATRE - 1:45 PM
ON THE WAY TO SCHOOL (Sur le chemin de l’école)
It’s been said that an education is like an adventure, but for the far-flung youngsters in this picturesque documentary the adventure begins before they ever get to school. This touching winner of the 2014 César for Best Documentary follows four tweeners as they risk their lives each day in their quests for knowledge. Twice a day, Jackson walks nine miles of Kenyan savannah, teeming with dangerous animals. Carlito and his sister ride the family horse through an often-treacherous twelve miles of Patagonian pampas, no matter how extreme the weather, Zahira travels four hours on foot, carrying a live chicken to trade for food. And in the Bay of Bengal, perhaps most challenging of all, Samuel’s two younger brothers push him two miles in a wheelchair made of bicycle wheels and a plastic lawn chair. With only their voices as a guide, these inspiring kids illustrate the growing appreciation for education the world over.
