Ramón Gieling

Chueca in central Madrid has been an oasis of freedom for the LGTBQIA+ community since the 1990s. But recently, due to the changing political climate of hate speech by politicians, the neighborhood has been under a magnifying glass.

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Every love, no matter how happy, sooner or later ends unhappily; either due to loss, due to death, or due to a broken bond. These are all sides of the same medal. Why do we love others if love can hurt us so much? Wouldn’t it be safer not to love? In this documentary, several people who have been profoundly confronted with love and death in their lives, provide glimpses of the enigma of love, based on their personal stories. On Freud’s famous couch, they are questioned about their experiences. Their stories are interwoven with timeless works from the history of painting and music. When words are not adequate, there is art and music.

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On All Saints’ Day, the Spanish pay tribute to their dead: a day of reverence and remembrance. Nevertheless, beneath the serene surface lie unhealed grief, thundering silence and ever-burning political conflicts. In the southern Spanish village of Frigiliana, time has not healed the wounds from the Franco era. Even now the murder of a villager in 1952 divides the community.

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Twenty homeless people, one opera. An Amsterdam based homeless choir is rehearsing an opera written for them. Who is setting the rules?

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On a Sunday afternoon, a man is asked to come to the police station to see if he can be of any help in the investigation of the rape and murder of two women.

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Erbarme dich - Matthäus Passion Stories is a labyrinthine narrative in which notables such as Peter Sellars, Emio Greco, Simon Halsey and painter Rinke Nijburg explain their special relationship with Bach’s St Matthew Passion to Ramón Gieling (Johan Cruijff: en un momento dado). They speak against the backdrop of a church which has fallen into disrepair, while a choir of homeless people and Pieter Jan Leusink’s Bach Choir & Orchestra rehearse the Passion. Leusink isn't just the conductor, he is one of the main characters himself, with a painful past in which this musical piece has played a dominant role. Stories from the others alternate seamlessly with this. We learn how the St Matthew Passion played a decisive role in the relations between men and women, fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and their unborn children, and finally that in spite of our differences we all find a common denominator in the secret of Bach's music.

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Cyriaque Kouenou was forced to leave his country and fled to the Netherlands. Staying there he has now entered his fourth year on a surrealistic trip with no end in sight, with stopovers in a tent camp, an empty church, an old office building and a former prison. A no man's land where you are stuck after being told that you aren't allowed to stay but also can't be sent back.

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A dramatic documentary about how the Netherlands got its first constitution.

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Dutch composer Simeon ten Holt achieved worldwide renown in 1979, when his work for four pianos Canto Ostinato was first performed. Although some music experts viewed it with disdain - it broke with prevailing notions of serialism and tonality - the piece was a huge hit in the contemporary classical music world. In the years since, numerous musicians have released their recordings of Canto, and it is still being performed around the world. Director Ramon Gieling interviewed a large number of people about the sometimes far-reaching impact this composition has had on their lives. One interviewee tells of how Canto was the soundtrack to the birth of her son; another has a section of the score tattooed on his arm. Gieling seeks to unravel the mystery of the universal power of music, and his blend of documentary footage, fiction, essays and archive material produces a multifaceted response to the question of just what it is about this piece that touches people so deeply.

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The wind blows almost permanently on the craggy coast of Northern Spain. While the legendary storm blusters, old villagers play cards and discuss the history of the scandalous relationship between Pepet Tremolls and the much younger Rosa Campos Del Amor, in the days of Franco's dictatorship. Tremolls was found dead on Christmas Eve. Suicide, people said. Or was it Rosa's resentful lover? 'The best distance to a beautiful young woman is the biggest one', the coroner concludes who examined Tremolls' body at the time. The gentlemen try to find out how the two lovers got to know each other and how intense the stormy relationship must have been. Jumping back and forth in time, the relationship and its players are expounded, alternated with images of the tranquil village, the wild nature and the wind that sweeps through the trees and stirs up dust on country roads.

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They still carry his house keys with them, Joaquin Sabina's old friends. It does not matter that the Madrid-based singer, who is adored throughout the Spanish-speaking community, changed the locks to his house years ago. After the brain haemorrhage that hit him in 2001, Sabina suddenly could not bear the dozens of friends anymore that invaded his house. This was a raw deal for them, as the interviews reveal that director Ramón Gieling had with them. As in Gieling's previous documentaries, he created a cinematographic form for the interviews, which he consistently applies. Friends and former lovers are introduced in a minutely reconstructed copy of the living room they were expelled from. In the real living room, they used to lead a loose life without thinking about the health risks.

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In this film with its humorous undercurrent, a widower rents the upper floor of the house of a young couple, who can no longer afford the mortgage after a dismissal. The man immediately moves in. The only thing he brings with him - hidden under a cloth - is a large cage. Acting against the man's express warning, the couple goes up to his room when he is away. Their curiosity costs both them and the tenant dearly.

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Johan Cruijff - En un momento dado is a 2004 documentary film by Ramon Gieling on the life of Dutch footballer Johan Cruijff.

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A documentary set in Jerusalem's Hadassah Hospital. In this hospital the staff treats the victims as well as the offenders of the numerous attacks in Israel's capital. The doctors make no distinction between their patients but for the patients it can be hard to accept that victims as well as terrorists are treated the same way.

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The filmmaker interviews still surviving residents of Las Hurdes, where Buñuel shot a controversial documentary almost 70 years ago, and compares the area as shown in that work to the way it seems now.

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When I told Johan van de Keuken I wanted to make a film about him and his work, we decided to make a film in a film, that is I would shoot the making of the film he was supposed to make about the Chinese photographer ToSang who would be making photographs of his clients. The film won a Jury Award in Figuiera da Foz, Portugal.

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On All Saints’ Day, the Spanish pay tribute to their dead: a day of reverence and remembrance. Nevertheless, beneath the serene surface lie unhealed grief, thundering silence and ever-burning political conflicts. In the southern Spanish village of Frigiliana, time has not healed the wounds from the Franco era. Even now the murder of a villager in 1952 divides the community.

Open details →

Twenty homeless people, one opera. An Amsterdam based homeless choir is rehearsing an opera written for them. Who is setting the rules?

Open details →

Erbarme dich - Matthäus Passion Stories is a labyrinthine narrative in which notables such as Peter Sellars, Emio Greco, Simon Halsey and painter Rinke Nijburg explain their special relationship with Bach’s St Matthew Passion to Ramón Gieling (Johan Cruijff: en un momento dado). They speak against the backdrop of a church which has fallen into disrepair, while a choir of homeless people and Pieter Jan Leusink’s Bach Choir & Orchestra rehearse the Passion. Leusink isn't just the conductor, he is one of the main characters himself, with a painful past in which this musical piece has played a dominant role. Stories from the others alternate seamlessly with this. We learn how the St Matthew Passion played a decisive role in the relations between men and women, fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and their unborn children, and finally that in spite of our differences we all find a common denominator in the secret of Bach's music.

Open details →