CineDOC Tbilisi Second Day

With Lithuania as the guest country here at CineDOC Tbilisi festival, it was natural to have Giedre Zickyte visiting. The director, who has had a big success with the film ”Master and Tatyana” with and about the brilliant photographer Vitas Luckus and his widow – and with the film she made with Chilean Maite Alberti, ”I’m not from here”, was giving a masterclass on the way she has used archives in ”Master and Tatyana” and in her ”How We Played the Revolution”. It was a very much alive, energetic and passionate Zickyte, who showed clips and told the audience how she kept on looking for material that could be used, sometimes (with the revolution film) it could take weeks to find the right material as she did, when she discovered a wonderful scene, where two children discuss – around 1990 – what the street demonstration was for. Hilarious! And she demonstrated how she integrated archive footage into the narrative flow. And how she used the photos of Luckus in two ways: to tell the dramatic story of his life and to show how fantastic a photographer he is.

Zickyte is now working on ”The Jump” that was pitched last year at the IDFA festival in Amsterdam. Logline: ”A breath-taking jump over the icy ocean propels a sailor from a Soviet boat to an American vessel. But is it enough to fulfil his dream of freedom?”

The film will have amazing archive material and Zickyte told us that she will travel back to the US, Florida with the protagonist Simas Kudirka as she after one and a half year now has the permission to film on the American ship. She showed the trailer of ”The jump” that Simas took in 1970. There is a very promising film coming up.

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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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