AND THERE WAS FIRE AT THE CENTRE OF THE EARTH

Using every available resource — old home movies, photographs, images in black and white and colour — this documentary by the young Austrian director Bernhard Hetzenauer is a sensorial essay about the nature of time and history. Vera Kohn, the therapist and follower of Karlfried Dürckheim who introduced Zen Buddhism in Ecuador, tells how she fled Prague for this country in the summer of 1939. The over seventy years that have gone by since then have not turned her past into ashes. Quito becomes the place where it is confronted with the present, blame and acceptance. (Gabriela Alemán, Quito)