RAB­BIT A LA BER­LIN /​MAUER­HASE boosts its Oscar® pro­file at DocuWeeks

Rab­bit à la Berlin/​Mauer­hase by Bartek Konopka and Piotr Roso­lowski was selec­ted for the IDA’s 13^th Annual Doc­uWeeks™ The­at­rical Doc­u­ment­ary Show­case which helps to qual­ify fea­ture and short doc­u­ment­ar­ies for Academy Award® con­sid­er­a­tion.

Doc­uWeeks™ provides doc­u­ment­ary film­makers with weeklong the­at­rical engage­ments in Los Angeles, CA and New York, NY that meet qual­i­fic­a­tion require­ments for AMPAS con­sid­er­a­tion. Doc­uWeeks™ premiered in 1997 as DOC­to­ber, and over the past 12 years, Doc­uWeeks™ has qual­i­fied over 133 short and fea­ture length films yield­ing 16 nom­in­a­tions and seven Oscar win­ners. Some of the past doc­u­ment­ar­ies in Doc­uWeeks™ include Oscar® win­ners Smile Pinki (2008), Taxi To The Dark Side (2007) and The Blood of Ying­zhou Dis­trict (2006), as well as Oscar® Nom­in­ees The Betrayal, War/​Dance, Salim Baba, and Sari’s Mother.

Rab­bit à la Ber­lin will be screened at the IFC Cen­ter in New York between the 7^th and the 13^th of August in the Short Docs sec­tion with 9 other titles.

Screen­ings: Fri 8/​7 4:47 PM

Sat 8/​8 6:37 PM

Sun 8/​9 8:32 PM 

Mon 8/​10 4:47 PM

Tue 8/​11 6:37 PM

Wed 8/​12 8:32 PM

Thu 8/​13 1:22 PM

more:

www​.doc​u​ment​ary​.org/​d​o​c​u​w​e​eks09

related links:

http://​media​de​coder​.blogs​.nytimes​.com/

http://​www​.indiewire​.com/​a​r​t​i​c​l​e​/​2​0​0​9​/​0​7​/​0​6​/​2​8​_​f​i​l​m​s​_​t​o​_​v​i​e​_​f​o​r​_​o​s​c​a​r​_​c​o​n​s​i​d​e​r​a​t​i​o​n​_​a​t​_​d​o​c​u​weeks

Rab­bit à la Berlin/​Maure­hase | 2009 | 40’& 51’ | cre­at­ive documentary

It’s an import­ant les­son of his­tory that a sys­tem of order inten­ded to pro­duce one res­ult will often give birth to some­thing entirely unex­pec­ted. So it was with the Ber­lin Wall, which was, in fact, two sep­ar­ate walls, one on the east and one on the west with a 120-​kilometre strip of land between them. The enclosed patch was unin­ten­tion­ally con­ver­ted into a kind of rab­bit reserve as the walls encircled the lush green mead­ows of Pots­damer Platz and cut its rab­bit pop­u­la­tion off from both escape and pred­at­ors. But then one day the walls came down and the rab­bits were sud­denly freed from a restrict­ive sys­tem, albeit one to which they had become accus­tomed. Told in the style of a nature doc­u­ment­ary, with a cap­tiv­at­ingly dreamy tone and a tongue-​in-​cheek nod to the story’s alleg­or­ical sig­ni­fic­ance, Rab­bit à la Ber­lin provides a fas­cin­at­ing his­tory les­son told through the eyes of animals.

Rab­bit à la Ber­lin is Polish-​German cop­ro­duc­tion of Anna Wydra MS Films, Telew­izja Pol­ska and ma​.ja​.de Filmproduk­tion, MDR, RBB in asso­ci­ation with ARTE, YLE, Licht­punt, VPRO. Film is sup­por­ted by Pol­ish Film Insti­tute, MEDIA Pro­gramme and Andrzej Wajda Mas­ter School of Film Dir­ect­ing. The film was developed within fol­low­ing pro­grams and work­shops: Nip­kow Found­a­tion, Ex Ori­ente by IDF and the Dis­cov­ery Cam­pus Mas­ter­school (now Doc­u­ment­ary Cam­pus).

awards: 16. HOT DOCS, Toronto, Canada: The Best Mid-​Length Doc­u­ment­ary Film Award

6. Plan­ete Doc Review, Warsaw, Poland: Magic Hour Award for the best mid-​length film 

49. Krakow Film Fest­ival, Poland: Grand Prix — The Golden Hobby-​Horse and The Bron­isław Chromy Sculp­ture for the Best Pro­du­cer of Pol­ish short and doc­u­ment­ary films for Anna Wydra

Cred­its: dir­ector: Bartek Konopka

writer: Bartek Konopka, Piotr Rosołowski
cine­ma­to­grapher: Piotr Rosołowski

editor: Mateusz Romaszkan
SFX: Grzegorz Korczak

sound: Fran­ciszek Kozłowski

com­poser: Maciej Cieślak

pro­du­cer: Anna Wydra

(10.07.2009)