Lara Lee and other top filmmakers set for 2nd Eko International Film Festival

Korean-Brazilian filmmaker Iara Lee [Photo: Michael (Yeong-ung) Yang, The Korea Central Daily News]


International award winning Korean Brazilian film producer and director Lara Lee is among the leading filmmakers who have already submitted films for the 2nd Eko International Film Festival coming up from Saturday July 9 to Thursday July 14, at the Silverbird Galleria in Lagos, Nigeria. The popular filmmaker who is based in New York City celebrated as the director of the documentaries Synthetic Pleasures and Modulations, as well as for her involvement with the "Gaza Freedom Flotilla", in which at least nine pro-Palestinian activists were killed by Israeli naval forces.
She is the founder of the Caipirinha Foundation and a member of the Council of Advisors to the National Geographic Society.

Lee was the producer of the São Paulo International Film Festival.
"Synthetic Pleasures", which deals with the impact of high technology on mass culture was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the Sundance Film Festival, and won the Jury Award for Best Documentary at the Ft. Lauderdale International Film Festival.

In 1998, she released the multimedia project "Modulations", which traces the evolution of electronic music. Her most recent film was "Beneath the Borqa", a 2000 short documentary film about the lives of women and children under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.
Her Cultures of Resistance, which celebrates creative acts of political struggle is a special selection of the Eko International Film Festival.

Other notable filmmakers are Gugu Michaels, a Nigerian American director who is an accomplished filmmaker who has worked as a director and producer on a number of commercial and independent projects including the feature films "Thugz", "Repentance" and "Dangerous County". He has also helmed a number of campaigns for retailers like Cadillac, Lamborghini and Porche. Prior to co-founding New Era Pictures, Michaels served as president of Dallas based Redrumm Records and worked with such artists as hip hop giants UGK; Alix François Meier from Essen / Germany. An editor for documentaries at SPIEGEL TV, and since 1992, a director for documentaries and commissioned producer for public television and private broadcaster. He has a natural fondness for France and Spain: from the culinary bon-vivant image down to the catacombs in Paris, the half-Frenchman loves anything and everything to do with the two countries. But he particularly likes widening his horizons. This is what has already taken him half way round the world to meet protagonists in unusual situations and get them to tell their story. Meier's "The King of Palma – Life according to Bruno“ is one of the top documentaries to be screened at the festival; and another notable filmmaker is the international award winning Nigerian director Chike Ibekwe, whose feature "Eternal" shared the Golden Screen best film award with “An Unusual Woman” by Burkinabe director Abdoulaye Dao.at the 14th annual “Ecrans noirs” Film Festival in Yaounde (Cameroon) in 2010.

Another special selection is the award winning short documentary Dream for Nigeria produced by McNally Temple Associates, Inc. It is based on the challenges and achievements of seven female members of Nigeria’s House of Representatives, and the role they play in their country’s political, social and economic development.

The final list of the selected films will be announced on June 25, 2011.


~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima

Culture of Resistance coming to Nigeria

Culture of Resistance coming to Nigeria

In Nigeria, oil companies have destroyed farmland leaving behind dirty water and no food. When the people began protesting by making flyers and giving speeches the Nigerian government started killing the peaceful protesters, so the next generation has resorted to violence in order to get clean water and food.
~ Lara Lee, of Culture of Resistance speaking on her sensational documentary.



Iara Lee is the director of the harrowing documentary "Cultures of Resistance," produced by George Gunn, and it is going to be shown at the second Eko International Film Festival this summer.

The production of "Cultures of Resistance" began in 2003 before the Iraq war and it was judged the Best Documentary at the Tiburon 2011 Film Festival.

"People were being killed and nobody cared. I started looking for small gestures-ordinary people that were relatable," Lee said.
She said that the documentary covered 25 countries, with interviews done in the native languages. Lee and her crew (which often just consisted of one camera man and if she was lucky, a sound guy) were often deported or imprisoned.

"I was put in jail in Palestine. You can't bring cameras into a lot of these countries, I just kept trying. Most of the time we were hiding from the governments; even the militants [we filmed] are less dangerous," said Lee.


~ By Ekenyerengozi Michael Chima