ID: Community Cameras

Instead of sketching an overview of the iconic yet rather forgotten œuvre of the Turkish director Yilmaz Güney, this documentary focuses on his experience behind bars and how that returned in his films. Güney shot his ultimate film, Le mur, in a French monastery, which he converted into a macabre prison.

Part of IFFR White Nights on Thursday 14 July at 18:00A filmmaker sits on a square in front of a cinema in Algeria. The whole society passes his lens, from frustrated cinephiles to diligent schoolgirls who dive into the auditorium for religion lessons. The spontaneous conversations illustrate how humble people move elegantly through a complex society.

Irina Nistor became retrospectively famous as the voice of the Romanian revolution. As a young woman she lent her scratchy voice to five thousand pulp films, thus inspiring people to have subversive dreams behind the (Iron) curtain. Who could suspect that American action films on smuggled VHS tapes would topple the Communists?

How does a crowd react to an historic event when certainties are shaken? Documentary maker Loznitsa collected TV and amateur footage of street protests in 1991. An attempted coup by reactionary communists embroiled Muscovites at the time in chaos and euphoria, fear and debate. See also Masterclass Sergei Loznitsa on Fri 29 Jan, 15:00, Cinerama 1.

Kon’s life is in danger in Tanzania. With unexpected aid he finally manages to find somewhere safe in Europe.

An idealistic collective launches a TV channel in the very early days of portable video cameras. This wonderful lesson in journalism makes it clear just how perilous it is to promote your own view of society via autonomous media. From the tumultuous period of Woodstock, the Black Panthers, women’s lib and anti-Vietnam demonstrations.

Hassan (17) prepares to leave his mountain village in Morocco. He is going to his father in the Netherlands. But how do you leave your home, and what do you take with you?

The New York Chinatown Fair opened in 1944 and closed its doors in 2012, when everyone started playing video games at home. This documentary focuses less on changing game technology and more on the players and their very lively microcosm. Including wonderful shots from the glorious era of the arcades.

Mutual misunderstanding rules when three immigrants work on a tile floor in a Dutch building. A glimpse of the previous life of one of the three brings them closer.

The Canadian Dominic Gagnon specialises in montage films, for which he takes amateur footage from the Internet. This grim, 21st-century variation on the documentary classic Nanook of the North is a hallucinogenic mixture of hunting and industry, nature and society. Cultural disorientation that is amplified by the soundtrack.

Do you remember who the precursors were of La Cicciolina? Eccentric eyewitnesses reconstruct the advent and above all the impact of the porn film in Italy. A film that shows in a playful and pertinent way how porn can become a strategic weapon to manifest yourself in a conservative community.

Lauded as cinematographer for Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, American Graffiti and The Conversation, Haskell Wexler was also despised by the Hollywood establishment because of his left-wing, activist documentaries. From the early 1960s, he personified civilian protest - as he still does, in his nineties. Sam Mendes is a fan.

A woman from Hong Kong planning to join the umbrella protests goes to visit her father, who is moving to an old folks’ home.

Layered, warm and both vital and melancholy short film about the three-cornered relationship between a Dutch female architect, an ambitious actress and a respected musician in tropical Recife.

Looking for extras and locations, a filmmaker settles on Chiloé, the second largest island off the coast of Chile. He does auditions, but mainly listens patiently to the stories of young and old people. As an outsider, he cautiously searches for the soul of the community and its underlying tensions.

Two men are both looking for a little warmth and recognition for the identity they lost after fleeing their homeland for the Netherlands.