At the 55th International Leipziger Festival for Documentary and Animated Film DOK Leipzig from 29th October – 4th November 2012, the Ecumenical Jury of SIGNIS and INTERFILM awards its prize, comprising € 2000 by the VCH-Hotels Germany GmbH – in the “Verband Christlicher Hoteliers e.V.” (www.vch.de) including the Hotel MICHAELIS in Leipzig, to the film
Like Stone Lions at the Gateway into Night (Comme des Lions de Pierre à l’Entrée de la Nuit) by Olivier Zuchuat, Switzerland/Greece/France 2012
The film is about so-called re-education camps on the Greek island of Makronissos in the Aegean Sea, where communist intellectuals were detained under degrading conditions from 1947 - 1951. Poetic texts by the internees, found in the cracks of the ruins, have now been reawakened to filmic life. With and in these texts, the prisoners kept their human dignity. The film is shattering evidence of the courage and mental strength needed to resist a dictatorship of uniformed thinking; a document of gentle poetry against shouted slogans. Texts, touchingly spoken by voices of the past, break with our conceptions of a country that many know only as tourists. Produced as a filmic essay in an excellent workmanlike fashion, "Comme des lions de pierre à l’entrée de la nuit" presents a stark contrast between a colourful postcard idyll on the image level and a documentation of abysmal powerlessness, deep hopes and lived courage on the sound level. Perhaps it was necessary that more than 20 years had to pass after the fall of the Iron Curtain before these texts could unfold their deeply human message from a time of ideological polarization and instrumentalisation. It does us here in Europe a lot of good to think about Greece as it is presented in this film.
Members of the Jury: Tomas Axelson, Falun (Sweden) Thomas Bohne, Leipzig (Germany), President Johanna Haberer, Erlangen (Germany) Bernadette Meier, Zürich (Switzerland)
From left: Tomas Axelson, Johanna Haberer, Bernadette Meier, Thomas Bohne (Photo: DOK Leipzig)
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