Healthy Workplaces Film Award 2009

EU-OSHA Award for the best documentary on work-related topics at the International Leipzig Film Festival

EU-OSHA is supporting, for the first time, the Healthy Workplaces Film Award for the best documentary on work-related topics.

The Award winner

The nominations

The Jury

Film Criteria

Photos of the ceremony

The Award winner

        

A BLOOMING BUSINESS by Ton van Zantvoort | The Netherlands 2009 | 52:00 min.

This is where the cheap roses in our flower shops come from: huge farms in Kenya. Images of a disaster illustrate the murderous cost of globalisation and our avarice.

We ordinary citizens think that the lovely flowers that decorate our home come from a huge garden. Even when we buy them in supermarkets, a garden is always somehow involved. Wrong! There are no happy cows and there is no garden. Only an industry.

In this case, the flower growing industry, for example in Kenya where the film “A Blooming Business” takes us and shows plainly the murderous conditions under which globalisation works. In Kenya, growing and exporting flowers for the European market is an important source of foreign currency. But at what cost!

Jane talks about it, a single mother of three who labours from seven in the morning until late at night and must sleep with the supervisor to keep her job. Or Agnes, who was fired after the chemicals in the pesticide corroded her face. Or Oskar who was also fired for talking back and has since earned a living as a water seller. But the water he sells is poisoned, because it comes from a lake into which 67 flower farms dump their unfiltered waste water. Talking of water – every rose consumes 1.5 litres per day. Which is why the water level of the lake is sinking, the fish population is shrinking and Kennedy can’t pay his rent. And, and, and ... A cynic is a person who looks for a coffin when he sees flowers – even more after seeing this film.

See the trailer at http://www.newtonfilm.nl/

The nominations

• A Blooming Business by Ton van Zantvoort | The Netherlands 2009 | 52:00 min.

This is where the cheap roses in our flower shops come from: huge farms in Kenya. Images of a disaster illustrate the murderous cost of globalisation and our avarice.

• Bloody Mondays & Strawberry Pies by Coco Schrijber | The Netherlands 2008 | 87:00 min.

A filmic meditation about time and life, boredom, work, stress and perfect calm. A hypnotic mental journey.

• In Search of the Riyal by Kesang Tseten Lama | Nepal 2009 | 89:30 min.

Nepalese migrant workers in the Middle East: modern slaves, exploited to the maximum. A shocking report about a fiercely capitalist Asia beyond all romantic clichés.

• Nuclear NTR, Nothing to Report (RAS Nucléaire, Rien à signaler) by Alain De Halleux | Belgium, France 2009 | 58:00 min.

The privatisation of energy production, outsourcing of jobs in nuclear power plants, employees subjected to a ‘management by fear’ and their impact on our security. Terrifying.

• On the Border of Desperation (Förtvivlans Gräns) by Nima Sarvestani | Sweden 2008 | 58:00 min.

Fuel smugglers between Iran and Iraq, the most gruesome slog and a life at the limits of humane existence. Life in Iran beyond spectacular headlines.

• PianoMania – In Search of the Perfect Sound (PianoMania - Auf der Suche nach dem perfekten Klang) by Lilian Franck and Robert Cibis | Austria, Germany 2009 | 93:00 min.

Lang Lang, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Alfred Brendel cannot work without him. The portrait of a piano tuner who is a master of his profession. The precision of music, craft and film.

• The House (La Casa) by Tayo Cortés | Colombia, Spain 2009 | 70:00 min.

Sisyphos in Bogotá: a garbage collector’s family caught in a cycle of poverty and misery and a fatal ménage à trois. A narrative as powerful as a Greek tragedy.

• Shanghai Fiction by Julia Albrecht and Busso von Mueller | Germany 2009 | 133:00 min.

A migrant worker, a businesswoman, a university professor and a German architect in the Chinese Babylon of the 21st century. A forced march through contemporary urban madness on film.

• The Hectic Life of a Dismissed Worker (La tumultueuse vie d'un déflaté) by Camille Plagnet | France 2009 | 59:00 min.

The 'Great Z' who used to be a machinist for the Burkina Faso national railway lost his job, friends, wife, everything. A tragicomedy as restless, melancholic and brilliant as this poet of the redundant ones.

• Sanya and Sparrow (Sanja i Worobei) by Andrei Grjasew | Russia 2009 | 61:00 min.

Two lost souls in a Russian quarry. Endless dialogues in no man’s land, friendship at the bottom end of existence – and an unexpected happy end.

The Jury

Ruth Diskin is the managing director of Ruth Diskin Films Ltd., a Jerusalem- based International marketing & distribution company. She holds a degree in International Relations and English Literature from the Hebrew University.
She has produced numerous film events, focusing on Israeli cinema around the world. Moreover, Ruth Diskin has served as a Juror at several international film festivals, amongst: Hamptons Film Festival, Munich Doc Film Festival and Montpellier Mediterranean Film Festival.

Ulle Schröder studied romance and politics and holds a degree as grammar school teacher. She worked for 12 years at the German regional channel NDR where she produced a history series on the German women’s movement.
After she moved to the European cultural channel ARTE in Strasbourg where she engaged in documentary, art and cultural films. Ulle Schröder aquired a formation as director and producer in documentary film. Since 1995 she is assistant director of ARTE’s documentary department.

Vincent Aubert-Jaquin is a consultant in Social Communication and graduated in psychology and educational science.
He was head of the film and multimdia production unit of INRS, the French Institute competent in the area of occupational risk prevention. Vincent Aubert-Jaquin is a founding member of the Europeen Consortium for Health and Safety at Work films production. He has taken part in the jury for the International Film Festival for Health and Safety at Work since 1996.

Film criteria

The film award honours a documentary film that focuses on the human being in a changing world of work. The film should deal with work-related topics such as physical and psychosocial conditions, risks at work, workers’ rights, health and safety aspects or the effects of political and economic change on the way we work and live. Another focus could be on groups facing particular challenges, such as migrant workers, women, young and ageing workers.

The Healthy Workplaces Film Award is given to an authored, creative and artistic documentary with a specific point of view that convinces the jury by its compelling storytelling, strong characters and excellent filmmaking skills regarding camera work, sound and montage.

DOK Leipzig stands for films dedicated to peace and dignity of mankind. The films presented in the documentary film competitions must not have been publicly screened in Germany before. World, international or European premieres will be favoured.