Life of Guangzhou - Sapphire Image Salon 2008 (Oct. 12)

Time: 2008-10-12
Venue: Sapphire Art Space

Sapphire Image Salon Scheduled for Second Half of 2008

11:00 The Champagne Spy
Country of Production: Israel / Germany
Commentary Language: Hebrew, German
Running Time: 89 min
Year of Production:2006
Subtitle: English

Oded is just 12 years old when his father reveals to him being a Mossad agent and makes the boy swear to secrecy because his life depends on it. While he leaves on his mission to Cairo as Wolfgang Lotz – ex Nazi millionaire and horse breeder – Oded and his mother remain alone in Paris, waiting anxiously for his return. Now Oded breaks a long silence and journeys into his father's real and covert identities, revealing the heavy price paid by his family, trapped in the shadows of espionage.

14:30 The Secret Lives of Sleepwalkers

Country of Production: Australia
Commentary Language: English
Running Time: 55 min
Year of Production: 2006
Subtitle: English

The first time on television this documentary delves into the very private lives of sleepwalkers to reveal how sleepwalking can wreck relationships. It follows the plight of several chronic sleepwalkers as they go through diagnosis and treatment. The outcome of each person' journey is revealed at the end of the show.

Take Rebecca Mackover, a beautiful 33-year old saleswoman from Silicon Valley, California. During the day she and her partner Martin have an idyllic relationship. But at night her behavior is so bizarre that Martin thinks she's possessed. He's reached the point where he can' take it any more and will leave her if she doesn't get treatment.

Then there's 34-year old Steve Cavicchiolo from Melbourne, Australia. Steve's night antics are so weird it' driving his partner Esther nuts. Steve screams, spits, and roams the house. Steve lost his last girlfriend because he urinated on her bedroom floor while sleepwalking. Unless he seeks help soon, he'll lose Esther.

But most scary is the rare condition where a sleepwalker 'acts out' their dream. Canadian, Leonard Courchesne, has this condition, known as Rapid eye movement sleep Behavior Disorder, or RBD. While dreaming Leonard throws pillows, falls out of bed and hits his wife Bonnie. He' even tried to choke her. Leonard seeks help before he injures Bonnie fatally.

But for some sleepwalkers it's already too late. On October 1st 2001, Stephen Reitz brutally murdered his lover Eva Weinfurtner during a romantic weekend on Catalina Island, California. Reitz claimed to have killed Eva in the midst of a sleepwalking episode. The prosecution pushed for murder one. But the defense revealed evidence to suggest that Reitz was indeed a sleepwalker. But they had to prove he was sleepwalking at the time of the murder. For the next 2 years a landmark court case ensued where sleepwalking itself, was put on trial.

15:25 Tell me why

Country of Production: Poland
Commentary Language: Polish
Running Time: 49min
Year of Production: 2006
Subtitle: English

It is the one thing that is the most difficult to discuss. Something which happens to only a very few. Love. We dream of it, we struggle to fulfill it... And we believe that if only it happens to us, everything will become simple and clear...

But what happens to us, when love happens during a period we must forget? What happens when love is intimately linked to tragedy?

Jurek Kamieniecki is a Pole of Jewish origin. At the outbreak of the Second World War he was just shy of 20. Certainly neither he nor his wife Stella Slawin could not have survived even the first year of German occupation if not for the help of their Polish friend Janusz Malinowski. It is he who helped Jurek enter the Polish Home Army (AK) resistance and provided false documents for Jurek and his family.

Thanks to the help of Janusz and her husband Stella managed to escape to territories occupied by the Soviet Red Army at the beginning of 1940. Jurek managed to visit her often by illegally crossing the border. But he did not stay with her – even though this would make him safe – he an AK soldier, wanted to fight for Poland's freedom.

And it is this separation that caused Stella to return to the Nazi-occupied territories. She knew what she was risking, because everyone already knew the truth about the extermination camps. But she wanted to return and that is how her ordeal began. First, life in the Warsaw Ghetto, then in Otwock. She lost her parents, her siblings and cousins – everyone - there on the day of it's final liquidation. She lived only because Jurek and Janusz managed to save her before she was put in a railway car destined for a death camp.

In May 1943, Jurek was arrested for partisan activities by the Nazis. After a cruel and lengthy investigation in Lwow during which the Gestapo discovered he was a Jew, Jurek was sent to Auschwitz. Stella's only chance to survive was to volunteer for slave labour in Germany. That was the only way she could hide from "Szmalcownicy" – Poles who gave up Jews to the Nazis for financial reward.

Jurek Kamieniecki's love for Stella was the saving grace that gave him strength at the worst of times. Her letters, full of dreams about their common future let him hope he would survive the unspeakable nightmare of Auschwitz.

In May 1945 after the liberation, Stella found her husband's family. They said Jurek was alive. She also knew he was looking for her. They had already arranged to meet when all of a sudden she disappears. Later Jurek found out that she had illegally left to the United States as the wife of another man.

For nearly forty years they had no contact. Stella did not reply to Jurek's letters or telephone calls. Their first contact was in 1982, when as a citizen of Israel Jurek nominated Janusz Malinowski for a Righteous Among the Nations of the World medal. Although she still avoided personal contact, Stella supported the nomination made by her former husband.

Both are now alone. The people with whom they created their families have departed. And it is now that Stella and Jurek are speaking with each other more frequently. They recall Janusz, their young days before the war. But they never speak about the war. And there is still no answer to the most important question: why did Stella leave? Did her flight mean the end of love? Perhaps the strength of the images remembered from the years of war were too painful to allow her to create a normal home with the man she loved?

"Tell Me Why" is a documentary film about the love of two people who lived out their youth in the most terrifying times of human history. This is also a story about the extraordinary feeling which rescued them from death, but could not outshine the horrific shadow of the Shoah.
Polish movie "Tell me why"

16:30 Last Call at the Gladstone Hotel
Country of Production: Canada
Commentary Language: English
Running Time: 65 min
Year of Production:2007
Subtitle:English

In 2000, developers purchase the crumbling, century-old Gladstone Hotel to turn it from skid row flophouse to trendy, arts and music hotspot. They think its empty... until they meet Marilyn, the chambermaid with a heart of gold; Shirley Ann, the cynical front desk clerk; and a motley crew of residents, including Maryanne, an ex-bag lady with a sweet personality who has turned her room into a toxic zone. The staff and residents—some who have been there for over 30 years—worry they'll be squeezed out during the hotel's revitalization.

The developers come up with a plan: gradual restoration, seeing staff and residents remain upstairs, while the bar serves designer drinks to hip new clientele downstairs. It doesn't work. When experimental filmmaker, Christina Zeidler inherits the mess and forms a "usiness model that includes social change," the hotel has the last word. City inspectors demand complete rewiring, the boiler blows up leaving the hotel without heat, ceilings leak, walls crumble and everybody's got to go.

Shot over five years in a cinema direct style, this film is an intimate and compelling portrait of the effects of urban renewal upon the poor, revealing the unintentional roles we all play in the process of gentrification.