Sheffield Doc/Fest 2017

… is running right now. The industry part has for years now proved to be the place to go to pitch in the first half of the year with the IDFA Forum being the one at the second half. The list of tv editors visiting is impressive and producers want to go there it seems; the list of projects to be pitched at the so-called Meetmarket is looong.

But what about the festival part of Sheffield Doc/Fest that I have previously criticized for being totally UK/USA orientated with tv documentaries as the dominant genre. Going through the program on the website it still looks like that and yet behind the many titles that I don’t know so let me take a quote from an interview in Screen Daily:

“Sheffield Doc/Fest’s Luke Moody is looking to expand the creative scope of the festival and welcome more experimental works.

This year’s edition of the UK festival, which runs from 9 to 14 June, marks Moody’s first turn as director of film programming, having moved to Doc/Fest after six years at non-profit organisation Britdoc, where he was most recently head of film.

“There’s an increasing hunger for artful films, and a growing confidence for filmmakers to make long-form docs that are playing with form,” he said.

Moody has instated six thematic programming strands to expand the “creative spectrum” of the festival: Doc/Vision, Doc/Adventure, Doc/Expose, Doc/Love, Doc/Think and Doc/Rhythm.

The Doc/Vision strand will comprise 20 long- and short-form films that feature more artful forms of filmmaking.

Highlights include Raed Andoni’s Berlinale-winning film Ghost Hunting (Photo), in which Palestinian ex-prisoners recreate Israeli interrogations; Kitty Green’s Netflix-backed Casting JonBenet, a stylised exploration of the unsolved death of six-year-old JonBenet Ramsay; and Timothy George Kelly’s Brexitannia, which interviews British citizens about the UK’s social and political landscape.”

And there are well known films on the program like Laura Poitras Assange-film ”Risk”, Askold Kurov’s film on Oleg Sentsov, Pawel Lozinski’s ”You have No Idea How Much I Love You”, a wonderful small retro of films from 1967 like Allan King’s ”Warrendale” and Shirley Clarke’s ”Portrail of Jason” and Chris Marker et al. ”Far from Vietnam”. Not go forget Danish Phie Ambo’s ”When you Look Away” that still has had no Dansih premiere, 

http://m.screendaily.com/5118882.article

https://sheffdocfest.com/

 

 

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Tue Steen Müller
Tue Steen Müller

Müller, Tue Steen
Documentary Consultant and Critic, DENMARK

Worked with documentary films for more than 20 years at the Danish Film Board, as press officer, festival representative and film consultant/commissioner. Co-founder of Balticum Film and TV Festival, Filmkontakt Nord, Documentary of the EU and EDN (European Documentary Network).
Awards: 2004 the Danish Roos Prize for his contribution to the Danish and European documentary culture. 2006 an award for promoting Portuguese documentaries. 2014 he received the EDN Award “for an outstanding contribution to the development of the European documentary culture”. 2016 The Cross of the Knight of the Order for Merits to Lithuania. 2019 a Big Stamp at the 15th edition of ZagrebDox. 2021 receipt of the highest state decoration, Order of the Three Stars, Fourth Class, for the significant contribution to the development and promotion of Latvian documentary cinema outside Latvia. In 2022 he received an honorary award at DocsBarcelona’s 25th edition having served as organizer and programmer since the start of the festival.
From 1996 until 2005 he was the first director of EDN (European Documentary Network). From 2006 a freelance consultant and teacher in workshops like Ex Oriente, DocsBarcelona, Archidoc, Documentary Campus, Storydoc, Baltic Sea Forum, Black Sea DocStories, Caucadoc, CinéDOC Tbilisi, Docudays Kiev, Dealing With the Past Sarajevo FF as well as programme consultant for the festivals Magnificent7 in Belgrade, DOCSBarcelona, Verzio Budapest, Message2Man in St. Petersburg and DOKLeipzig. Teaches at the Zelig Documentary School in Bolzano Italy.

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