DOK Leipzig
Well, I have to confess that I was not at the cinema this year at DOK Leipzig! Shame on you, many will think and right they are. There is nothing but sitting in a big cinema with big screen with a big audience sharing an experience. But I have for three days from 9am in the morning seen a lot of films at the DOK Markt scouting for other festivals, to get updated on what goes on and to forward my impressions through this website.
The DOK Markt is wonderfully organised. You go there, you have made your reservation in beforehand, 415 films from 71 countries are available, digitalised, so you give your benutzername and password number, find your title, click, and there you have the film on a fine screen with good quality in a hall where the temperature makes you stay fresh – the air condition in the Museum für Bildende Kunst, where the video library is placed, is pretty effective! After you have screened the film, you can send an email to the contact person of the film if you wish to have the film for your tv station or festival or greet the maker with nice words.
No objections in other words, the same goes for the meeting place downstairs in the lobby of the museum: accreditation and information desk, a café, meeting area in corners, easy to find people and to be found. Relaxed. And close to everything in cosy Leipzig.
And the place to have a quick talk with an old friend Claas Danielsen, who is festival director in his 10th year, announcing that 2014 will be his last one. Danielsen has done a great work to make DOK Leipzig what it is today, a meeting place with strong competitive programmes, a strong many faceted industry programme without forgetting film history and masterclasses with important directors and a look at other continents and countries like India, Brazil, Chile…
One of the best films I saw, maybe the best was Russian “Optical Axis” by Marina Razbezhkina, (photo).
