Festival

I want to be seen, says one them. I want to be conventional, says the other. Both of them took a very unconventional decision, to change from being a man to being a woman. The title says that they have…

From a filmic point of view it has everything, it is so well done: strong characters, who are developed, as a similar strong story is being unfolded, with conflicts, dramas, emotions, intimacy, closeness. The style is aggressive, the camera goes…

It is so natural that Krakow has been a Cultural Capital of Europe. It has history, beautiful buildings, an active outside life with loads of cafés – yes, we are many visitors in this city and the Main Market Square…

Vera and Marcel, brother and sister. Marcel, film director. They sit together around a table. They do so to recollect and remember Tonia, the mother of the siblings, a woman who was in jail and a woman who was filmed…

In the old festival hotel Cracovia, next door to the Kijow Cinema, where the main programme of the festival is running, there is a so-called Industry Zone, where festival people meet and talk to filmmakers in an informal atmosphere about…

First an introduction taken from YouTube, where the Krakow Film Foundation has posted videos and some trailers from films taking part in the 51st (!) edition of Krakow Film Festival, 23rd – 29th May 2011: KFF is one of the…

It is good and bad at the same time. Bad because it reflects that international cooperation for the production of non-mainstream documentaries no longer happens between the national film funds and/or the national broadcasters, good because it reflects that festivals…

Wonder how many documentaries will be screened in Cannes this year? The stars are there, the most fascinating is Faye Dunaway on the gorgeous poster of this year.      

Zanda Dudina from the National Film Centre in Latvia read my text about the film on Rudolf Ming, see below. She tells me that Rudolf – 13 at the time of the film, 16 today – now have a real…

Good news it is that this Latvian documentary, produced by the studio that carries the name of documentary legend Juris Podnieks, has made it to the Hot Docs festival (see below) and will have three screenings in Toronto in the…

Want to share this beautiful photo from Belgrade, from Svetlana and Zoran Popovic, Magnificent7, European feature documentary festival, next edition January 2012.

Conversations with documentary filmmakers from Italy is always full of head shaking over the situation in Italian television, which is basically run by the main character in Italian documentary of today: Silvio Berlusconi. There are public funding mechanisms, and they…

If idfa in Amsterdam is the biggest in Europe, Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival is North America’s largest documentary festival, conference and market. It returns for its 18th annual edition from April 28 to May 8, 2011. Showcasing the…

Nothing happens. Or a lot happens. Up to you as audience. It depends on how you define ”a story”. In mainstream definition terms one would say that there is no story, and yet here is an outline of the short…

It is not unusual that we do proper promotion for events that we are involved in ourselves. This is no exception! Loyal readers have read my texts from Israel and Palestine – where a workshop was held that ended up…

Twice per year the Danish Film Institute (DFI) invites the national documentary filmmakers, distributors, promoters and bureaucrats, including television people, to meet for information and inspiration. The first meeting took place on monday this week, a so-called ”DOK-dag” (Documentary Day)…

From the DOK Dag (see above): Could have listened to and watched much more of the work of multi artist Kaspar Schröder, an original talent, who also makes films and has got a lot of well deserved praise for his…

On this site we have been writing about this film a couple of times. It came out of the European training programme called DocuRegio, where I met it, and I was surprised that the festivals in Leipzig and Amsterdam did…

The International festival of documentary films Cinéma du réel March 23rd -April 5th 2011 opened this Wednesday in Paris at le Centre Pompidou for the 33rd time. Readers of this blog are used to a broad coverage of this festival,…

.. is the name of the newsletter of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival that also carries the name: Images of the 21st Century. A clip from the newsletter text: The 13th Thessaloniki Documentary – Images of the 21st Century ended on…

The festival in Damascus still runs today and tomorrow. I left this morning and the few times I was in the cinema, it was full. Beyond any doubt, this festival – that has been running for four years – has…

So there we were at the beautiful Danish Institute in Damascus on a rainy tuesday, March 8. The small shops at the soukh were closed, not because of the International Women’s Day but to celebrate the constitution of the governing…

Three projects were given a financial support at the end of the presentation day at Dox Box Campus 2011: ”Brakes” by Bassel Shehade received the ”Best Syrian Project Grant” of 6000$ (previous title: Female Wheels). ”My Uncle. ”The Terrorist”” by…

I am listening to Cara Mertes from the Sundance Institute, she has a power point presentation. Behind her is a quote by Robert Redford: Because audiences are starved for new ideas, voices and visions… as a motivation to set up…

There is no revolution in Damascus – small demonstrations in front of the Egyptian and Libyan embassy were stopped immediately by the authorities – but there are many revolutionaries among the participants at the Dox Box Campus that runs parallel…

Fourth edition of a festival – without Omar Amarilay, see below – that deserves a lot of respect for its ambition to show creative documentaries from all over the world to an audience that normally has no chance at all…

It is not new that the NY Museum of Modern Art has a very active film department and a very high quality in selection. Neither is it new that the Museum shows a lot of documentaries. But it is maybe…

The Italian director Andrea Deaglio and his Turin Based production company Babydoc pass on the information that their film ”Il futuro del mondo passa da qui”, with the subtitle ”City Veins”, has been selected for the festival Cinema du Réel,…

“Guanape Sur” by Jànos Richter has been selected for the Premiers Pas section of “Visions du reel”, that runs in Nyon Switzerland from 7-13.April 2011. The director graduated from the Zelig Documentary Film School in Bolzano last year. His film,…

It was a proud Joan Gonzalez, director of DocsBarcelona, who texted me this morning. In the newspaper Vanguardia, page 2, Gonzalez was given a ”GreenLight”, a tribute that is given to people, who has done something special for their profession…

It was the first time that DocsBarcelona included awards. At the fifth edition of the festival statuettes and cash prizes were distributed. €6000 was given to the film “Foreign Parts” (photo) by Verena Paravel and J.P. Sniadecki. The description of…

… hopefully, because there were many talented directors with interesting and intriguing project proposals at the 14th edition of the Pitching Forum in Barcelona, see below. This posting does not allow to mention all the 23 projects which were presented,…

… edition number 14 it was on February 3 and 4. For those readers who are not familiar with the terminology – pitching in the film world is about filmmakers throwing film ideas and proposals to broadcasters, film funds, sales…

… indeed they are, as it was proved at the 14th edition of the DOCSBarcelona pitching forum section. With the help of Ibermedia, a financial support mechanism that links the Iberian countries Spain and Portugal with countries in Latin America,…

”Look at this landscape, it makes you want to film it”, he says, Mark Cousins, film historian and writer and with ”The First Film” also a brilliant essayistic filmmaker. With his wonderful Scottish accent, or is it Northern Irish, that…

If you click 48 on this site, you will have numerous hits. The film of Susana de Sousa Dias has been given many postings for its innovative, artistic exploration of the documentary language. It was one of the first films…