NOT WITHOUT MY DAUGHTER!
American filmmaker Jon Jost, attending the 61st Venice International Film Festival with his most recent feature, Homecoming in the Cinema Digitale competition, announced the upcoming production of a new film, a documentary essay which will deal with the “kidnapping” of his daughter, Clara Jost, on November 2, 2000, by her mother, Portuguese film director Teresa Villaverde.
According to the press release: “Clara Jost was illegally taken from Italy by Teresa Villaverde… and has since been held in Portugal…. Following the advice of the US Consulate General and of his lawyer in Portugal, Mr. Jost went through the legal procedures in Portugal only to find that the entire system was utterly corrupted, and that legality, in any meaningful sense, simply does not exist in that country. Following an illegal ruling by the Portuguese Appeals Court (Tribunal do Relacoes) in October, 2001, Mr. Jost commenced an Internet exposure of the corruption of Portugal’s Judiciary, its Attorney General, and finally of its President, all of whom are involved in this case. In June, 2002, in response to this internet-based effort, the Portuguese newspaper, O Independente, published an article on the matter, ending with the statement that, ‘The writer of these e-mails does not know that corruption is a Portuguese illness seldom mentioned and never investigated.’
“The as-yet untitled work is being made with BulletProof Film, of Chicago, IL, and with the collaboration of … 26-4… an organization for Portuguese parents who have had to deal with the juvenile court systems of that country, which have chronically shown themselves to be corrupted and to operate in illegal manners, most frequently adversely to fathers.”
Additional information about the case, and about Josts’s forthcoming documentary — which he hopes to complete in time for next year’s Venice Film Festival — can be found on his Web site.
