DocStories Black Sea/ 4
Young Georgy Molodtsov, participant at the first session of DocStories, film director graduated from VGIK 2008, took the floor on the last morning to – with great commitment and energy – introduce the work that is being done to promote the documentary around the Moscow International Film Festival, MIFF, and the connected screenings during the year on TV Kultura, that so far have included 45 films.
At the festival that like last year (where this blogger was in the jury reporting from the festival) showed 25 documentaries with 7 in competiton – the winner was ”Searching for Sugarman” (photo) by Malik Bendjelloul with “Ambassador” by Mads Brügger having the Audience Prize.
Molodtsov, who is very much involved in the work of the festival together with strong names like director Sergey Miroshnichenko and film critic and programmer Grigory Libergal, the same team that stands behind the weekly documentary slot “Watching and Discussing” on TV Kultura, explained that this programme runs Saturdays at 10 or 11pm, that there is a strong press coverage, that it is not possible to analyse exactly how many viewers it has, that experience now shows that films about post-Soviet life are the most popular with the example of Marianna Kaat’s “Pit No 8” that had more viewers than Oscar-winning “Man on Wire”. The discussions, Molodtsov said, take place in a studio with a focus on the subject. The films are not subtitled but dubbed.
He also mentioned the channel 24Doc that shows many documentaries, recently Marina Goldovskaja’s “A Bitter Taste of Freedom” on her murdered friend Anna Politkovskoja, as well as the excellent documentary website Miradox, run by Ludmila Nazaruk, who also stands behind the St. Petersburg based DoxPro training initiative.
http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/eng/
http://www.moscowfilmfestival.ru/miff34/eng/programs/?id=4151