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!