DocsBarcelona 2015

There was champagne on the football pitch the other day in Madrid, where FC Barcelona won the Spanish League. And the Danish fan in his corner chair in the garden house took a cigar from the humidor and celebrated his favourite team once more as he has done so many times in Copenhagen and in Barcelona at Camp Nou. A great prologue to what starts next week in the Catalan capital: DocsBarcelona, another celebration, this time of the art of documentary cinema.

I have been working with and for DocsBarcelona since the very beginning almost twenty years ago, have enjoyed seeing the development of an event that started as a so-called industry training and pitching arrangement to be added with a festival some years ago, and now also an InterDocsBarcelona ” to encourage interactive and transmedia documentary”. If you go to the website of DocsBarcelona, you will also discover that there is a Documentary School coming up, a Documentary of the Month distribution initiative that celebrates its 10th year – and by the way DocsBarcelona also operates in Chile and Colombia!

Yes, DocsBarcelona is super ambitious and still the festival has a moderate size with a reasonable number of films presented in a reasonable number of screening venues. The CCCB (the Cultural Centre) will host screenings and the industry meetings where the format has changed from an open pitching session to speed meetings – 40 projects are to be presented to a selection of 30 financiers and distributors/sales agents. I talked to a friend, who had got 13 meetings. What a logistical process to make this work out!

Back to the festive atmosphere, the festival has introduced ”Docs&Wine” (!!!), a quote from from the site:

…After viewing 5 clips from 5 different films from the festival, the couples will have to pair each film with one of the selected wines. A game in which participants will enjoy a new way of approaching documentary through wine. A pioneering sensual experience that will not leave you indifferent… I have signed up!

http://www.docsbarcelona.com/en/

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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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