Docu Talents from the East

Not a lot of energy, so It’s copy-paste time right now here in Copenhagen’s tropical heat… and it is easy when good news arrive online like the one about the upcoming ”remarkable creative documentary projects from Central and Eastern Europe”, which were presented in Karlovy Vary two days ago. Organized by the festival and the super-active Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival (to take place October 23-28).

The film projects presented by the makers are all to premiere this year or in 2015 and I happen to have met several of them on other occasions, and yes they are remarkable.

Like ”Anthill” from Estonia by Vladimir Loginov and Elina Litvinova, ” a portrait of a giant garage complex located in the largest housing estate in Tallinn. 700 garage box owners form an extraordinary men’s club, and vary from those who use the garages to maintain their cars and those who adapt their boxes for living. The complex is even more unique owing to the existence of private saunas, a restaurant, an animal clinic and other artefacts of life stuck in time  20 years ago.” It has some wonderful scenes, great characters, humour and a poetic camera style.

I also have great expectations to Magdalena Szymkow and her “found-footage portrait of a writer and reporter” = Polish master Ryszard Kapuściński. Szymkow, who made the fine film “My House Without Me”, was a collaborator of the journalist/essayist and a co-author and translator of his books.

One more, but read about all of them, link below, I met in Jerevan last summer: “Our Atlantis” by Georgian Arthur Sukiasyan. From the synopsis: “a documentary about an Armenian camp in Istanbul (Turkey), which was built by orphans in 1960s and later on taken away by Turkish authorities. This is a journey between the past and present of the camp showing how 30 years later children of this camp try not to lose their camp memories. And through this reconstruction, Our Atlantis tells the dramatic story of Karo and Flor who were together in this camp, not knowing that they were siblings, which they discovered by chance only 15 years later.” I saw astonishing footage one year ago.

http://www.dokument-festival.com/industry/docu-talents-from-the-east/2014

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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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