DOC Meeting Argentina/2
”The first step for your doc” was the slogan for the very succesful pitching forum and conference held in Buenos Aires during the last three days. And for many of the film projects that was presented it was a very fine first step according to the reactions from a panel of tv representatives, which for me – an experienced forum participant – was refreshingly new. The Argentinian television Encuentro was there, two Brasilian channels (GNT-Globo and TV Cultura) took part, Colombian (RTVC), Venezuelan (Telesur) and Mexican (Canal22) made their voices hear as well as Turner LatAm and NatGeo LatAm. Of course it was obvious to have these channels for a meeting of filmmakers from Latin America, more surprising and impressive was it to see Al Jazeera Documentary Channel, Press TV from Iran, a sales agent from Magus Entertainment in India and from China, LIC. Of the ”usual suspects” in professional meetings like this the two American PBS representatives Tom Koch from WGBH and Simon Kilmurry from P.O.V. contributed as well as Lorenzo Hendel from RAI in Italy.
The pitching session included 24 film projects and both days had a full house of filmmakers (more than a hundred), who wanted to experience the dialogue between those who have the creative ideas and those who look for docs for their tv slots. The general reactions from the panelists were positive and sentences like ”let me see a rough cut” and ”we will buy it when it is finished” were often heard, but from what I heard from the individual business meetings on the third day, a handful of coproductions were also planned to happen.
I had the privilige to moderate the pitching session together with colleague Mikael Opstrup. Photo fom the PBS/POV supported documentary “Presumed Guilty” (Hernandez, Negrete and Smith) that was shown at DOC Meeting.
