Macedonian Film Showcase

Three documentaries (these replace earlier advertised films).

Seamstresses is about the seamstresses in the small town of Shtip. They attend to their most loyal customers like Benetton, Versace, H & M, and do so even faster then the Chinese competition. A seamstress has to sew 120 shirts a day. If she wants to buy one of her shirts at Benetton, she would have to work hard for a month. There is full employment among the women of Shtip, but men there are unemployed. Seamstresses shows a female gaze onto the consequences of globalisation in a country that still has no “new men”.

Macedonians In Istanbul is about the fifth generation born in the city, whose ancestors moved to Istanbul in the 19th or early 20th century. Christian Orthodox by religion, they observe their festivals and holidays at several sacred buildings which are still being used in the city for that purpose. The members of this colony, mainly from the Aegean part of Macedonia, belong to a small community of rare, genuine, long-standing citizens of the former metropolis of the Ottoman Empire.

Reaching the Other Side was filmed in a suburb of Skopje, which is the biggest Roma settlement of Europe - Suto Orizari. The movie was produced as a support to the sustainable establishment of the Roma Health Mediator programme. Sustainability of the Roma Health Mediator programme is one of the priorities for the Roma Health Program / Open Society Foundations Budapest, (Hungary) in six countries, (Macedonia, Serbia, Slovakia Ukraine, Romania and Bulgaria).