DocStories Black Sea/ 1
The first session of the new documentary storytelling workshop DocStories with around 20 participants from the countries surrounding the Black Sea is coming to an end in wonderful Tbilisi, Georgia. Films have been screened and discussed and analysed, and the filmmakers projects – some at an early stage of development, some rough cuts – have been turned around and commented and advised upon by the colleagues and invited tutors like the filmmakers Aliona van der Horst from Holland, Alina Rudnitskaya from Russia, the editor Menno Boerema (editor of several of Johan van der Keuken’s work) and the dramaturg Dirk Willemsen, both from Holland as well – and this blogger.
The workshop has been set up by Romanian Ileana Stanculescu and Georgian Artchil Khetagouri, both directors, their last film being ”Noosfera” (photo), reviewed on this blog.
Among the films shown were Johan van der Keuken’s classic film essay, ”The Long Holiday”, his last film made after he got to know that he had prostate cancer, ”Boris Rhyzy” by van der Horst, three films by Rudnitskaya and ”Souvenirs” by Shahar Cohen and Halil Efrat.
Discussions were held around different storytelling approaches like the observational, the essayistic, the hybrid of fiction and observation as well as looking at the characteristics of the documentary road movie.
Next session takes place in October in Sibiu in Romania parallel to the Astra documentary film festival.
