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DAFilms launches “Best of”, and retrospectives of Angela Schanelec and Jessica Sarah Rinland

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- Doc Alliance's streaming platform heads into the final weeks of the year with a Best of DAFilms selection and filmmaker focus programmes on the two singular women directors

DAFilms launches “Best of”, and retrospectives of Angela Schanelec and Jessica Sarah Rinland
Passing Summer by Angela Schanelec

The Best of DAFilms is an annual selection of the best feature films and documentaries premiered on the platform throughout the year. From 13 December 2021, viewers will be able to discover what the curators of DAFilms have selected to summarise this busy year in film for the platform, which has acquired a record number of films and mounted a wealth of retrospectives, dedicated both to countries, such as Portugal, and to filmmakers as diverse as Roberto Minervini, Ignacio Agüero, Věra Chytilová, Marc Isaacs and Paula Gaitán. Their names are represented in the line-up of titles this year, along with gems from the various festival focuses that have run on DAFilms throughout the year, from Trieste to Locarno, via Ji.hlava and FIDMarseille.

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DAFilms is also launching a retrospective of celebrated German director Angela Schanelec, winner of the Silver Bear for Best Director at the 2019 Berlinale. The ten-title DAFilms retrospective "Angela Schanelec: To Burn, But Differently", which takes its title from a line by Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal quoted in Schanelec’s only true documentary work to date, Prague, March 92 (1992), represents a shift for the Czech-based international VoD platform, which has traditionally focused on documentary films. With this tribute, DAFilms asserts itself as a distinctive voice for distributing pioneering fiction cinema, too. The films are available worldwide, excluding the USA and France, and almost all are presented as newly restored versions. All films are shown with English subtitles, and many with French and Spanish ones.

“Schanelec’s work crystallises the exquisite magic that one encounters in the right places at the intersection of documentary and fiction,” says DAFilms curator Christopher Small. “Her fiction films draw so much from the power of unadorned documentary sounds and images; as a viewer, it is impossible not to feel people and the spaces they occupy far more powerfully and suggestively than in the work of other comparable filmmakers. For all these reasons and more, we felt this was the perfect filmmaker to begin to explore the world of fiction alongside.”

In parallel with these programmes, DAFilms also will shine a spotlight on British-Argentinian artist-filmmaker Jessica Sarah Rinland, with a focus on seven of her intricate, tactile non-fiction works. These are films concerned with the tangible, immediate sensations of the world, the pleasures of what it means to simply exist, of working with your hands, of approaching even the most unsettling aspects of the natural world with curiosity and restless intelligence.

Through a relaxed but focused gaze on those elements of our world which concern her, Rinland has become one of the most distinctive artistic voices in the world of experimental cinema today. Her work hasn’t regularly been shown online, typically the domain of galleries, festivals and film institutions around the world. This focus programme connects her unique filmmaking practice with new audiences around the world, directly through the DAFilms streaming portal.

Here is the list of films included in The Best of DAFilms 2021:

Homelands [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Jelena Maksimović (Serbia) (2020)
Point and Line to Plane - Sofia Bohdanowicz (Canada) (2020)
I Was at Home, but... [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Angela Schanelec
film profile
]
- Angela Schanelec (Germany/Serbia) (2019)
Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Jessica Sarah Rinland (UK/Argentina) (2019)
Exemplary Behaviour [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Audrius Mickevičius, Nerijus Milerius (Lithuania/Slovenia/Bulgaria/Italy) (2019)
I Never Climbed the Provincia - Ignacio Agüero (Chile) (2019)
The Filmmaker's House [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Marc Isaacs (UK) (2020)
The Viewing Booth - Ra'anan Alexandrowicz (Israel) (2020)
Days in Sintra - Paula Gaitán (Brazil) (2007)
The Other Side [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Roberto Minervini
film profile
]
- Roberto Minervini (Italy/France) (2015)
The Vodka Factory - Jerzy Sladkowski (Sweden) (2010)
The Portuguese Woman [+see also:
film review
trailer
interview: Rita Azevedo Gomes
film profile
]
- Rita Azevedo Gomes (Portugal) (2019)
Hashti Tehran - Daniel Kötter (Iran) (2016)
Casa Roshell - Camila José Donoso (Mexico/Chile) (2017)
White on White [+see also:
film review
trailer
film profile
]
- Viera Čákanyová (Slovakia/Czech Republic) (2020)
The Kiosk [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
- Alexandra Pianelli (France) (2020)
Comrades in Arms - Catarina Henriques (Portugal) (2021)
The Blunder of Love - Rocco di Mento (Germany) (2021)
Daisies [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
- Věra Chytilová (Czechoslovakia) (1966)
Extinction [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
- Salomé Lamas (Portugal/Germany) (2018)

Here is a list of films included in the “Angela Schanelec: To Burn, But Differently” retrospective (all German-produced, unless specified otherwise):

I Was at Home, but… (Germany/Serbia) (2019)
The Dreamed Path [+see also:
trailer
film profile
]
(2016)
Afternoon (2007)
Marseille (2004)
Passing Summer (2001)
My Sister’s Good Fortune (1995)
I Stayed in Berlin All Summer (1994)
Far Away (1992)
Prague, March 92 (1992)
Lovely Yellow Color (1991)

Here is a list of films included in the “Filmmaker in Focus: Jessica Sarah Rinland” retrospective:

Those That, at a Distance, Resemble Another (Argentina/UK) (2019)
Black Pond (UK) (2018)
Y Berá: Aguas de Luz/Bright Waters (UK) (2016)
The Blind Laborer (UK) (2016)
Expression of the Sightless (UK) (2016)
Necropsy of a Harbour Porpoise (Seeing From our Eyes into Theirs) (UK) (2015)
Adeline for Leaves (UK) (2013)

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