DOK Leipzig Arrival
You arrive at the Hauptbahnhof in Leipzig where there are film screenings every night, and they are packed, festival director Leena Pasanen said, when we met her. Off to the festival center which as usual is at the museum close to the market. Heavy catalogues, like when not all is online, good to have a catalogue in hand. Ran into old friends like master Miroslav Janek, whose “Normal Autistic Film” is in the main competition. And several Polish women who are here as the festival has put a focus on Poland through a retrospective. I will not have time to watch them, alas, but I see that there is a film on Karabasz, and that will be on my list for sure. Walking on to the hotel Innside, that opened two months ago and makes an immediate good impression. I went back to the Festival Centre to have a drink at the Polish reception, ran into, as always, and with pleasure, producer and festival director of ZagrebDox Nenad Puhovski and several others. Including Svetoslav Draganov from Bulgaria who is to make a fiction film about a documentary director… and the women behind the Doker festival in Moscow. Dinner at Telegraph across the street from the hotel with a wonderful surprise meeting Jørgen Leth, our Danish hero, who today is to have a masterclass with his children Karoline Leth, producer and Asger Leth, director. The event is called “The Leth Legacy”, there will be clips from the three, a generation meeting it will be, hopefully with some gentle provocations. I am so curious to attend and see and listen, Leena Pasanen, who hosted the dinner that also included Stefano Tealdi, her partner with whom I have been working for many years when we started workshops at EDN in the South of Europe, has set it all up and you just wonder why that has never happened on Danish ground. Do you hear me CPH:DOX.