Baltic Sea Forum – Commissioning Editors
… so who were they, the people at the table who were supportive and constructively critical, well simply wanted to help and in many cases asked for meetings and to be kept updated on the development of the projects. If and when the positive reactions turn into letters of commitments and at the end into contracts that is of course another story, but for many projects this first step was also a proof of the potential of the project – and many returned home in a state of creative confusion, as the advices were different:
Cynthia Kane from ITVS in the US was as usual always warmly encouraging the pitchers and showed her passion for good social and human interest stories. Her US colleague from Sundance Institute, Cara Mertes, analysed quickly the projects’ weak and strong points, as did Alex Szalat from Arte france, who as Reinhart Lohmann from ZDF/Arte fought their best to see where the slot-linked European cultural channel par exellence with a strong tradition for creative documentaries could place the projects. Not easy… more easy for veteran forum panelist Wim van Rompaey, Lichtpunt in Belgium, who go for 52 minute documentaries that have an ethical angle to be discussed, and who never leave a forum without bringing one or two projects to his committee. Katja Wildermuth from MDR in Germany is for many an exemplary clear-talking commissioning editor as she always communicates yes, I would like to talk more, or No, this is not for me. Flora Gregory represented Al Jazeera and went for the more reporting documentaries, Charlotte Gry Madsen from DR/TV brought some optimism advertising the new historical and cultural digital channel, Austrian distributor (Autlook) Peter Jäger was looking for artistic theatrical documentaries and Russian Grigory Libergal (photo) was an excellent commentator on content and brought knowledge on Russian situation to the table. The three Baltic channels (represented by Marje Jurtshenko, Anna Rozenvalde and Tadas Patalavicius) did their job and supported their producing colleagues, and neighbouring YLE editor, Outi Saarikoski, was again wonderfully unpredictable and funny in her remarks.
