Baltic Sea Docs/ 3

Training days for the pitching part of Baltic Sea Docs are over, Saturday and Sunday are the days for the projects to be presented at the Hotel Albert in Riga. And it is quite a range of projects that will be brought to the panelists, who are representatives from tv stations, sales agents and distributors, and film fund people. The hall on the 11th floor will be full, the curtains will be blocked for the view of the wonderful city of Riga, and the project holders, the directors and the producers, will have their magic 15 minutes for presentation and Q& A from the 15 man/woman panel.

It is same procedure as every year but with new people on both sides. There will be projects from Georgia, the three Baltic countries, Russia, Norway, Germany, Finland and Sweden. From the latter comes veteran Maj Wechselmann, a director with more than 60 films on her filmography, most of them dealing with political and social issues in the world we are living in, from a humanistic and often controversial point of view, this one however is a film that is closer to Wechselmann herself, entitled ”Mother” (photo), quite a story, already supported by Swedish Film Institute and Swedish Television (SVT). From the veteran to young Georgian Ana Tsimiatia, who presents a personally experienced documentary from a provinsial library in her country. The director is close to a rough cut with her film, and it looks more than promising.

As does local production company Mistrus’s big project to celebrate Riga next year when the capital of Latvia will be a European Cultural Capital – five renowned directors will make each their film in different areas of Riga: Ivars Seleckis, local documentary icon, German Raimer Komers, Sergey Lotzniza, Danish Jon Bang Carlsen, German Bettina Henkel, Estonian Jaak Kiilmi. Quite a strong team with Davis Simanis as the one responsible for binding the individual films together.

Yesterday I blogged about the Q&A with producer of ”The Act of Killing”, Signe Byrge – her comments to the film (50 mins.) can now be seen on

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-6xWVkgjXI&feature=youtu.be

what a generosity from the side of the organisers.

http://www.wechselmann.se/en/2013/06/05/new-project-my-mother/

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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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