Second day of a workshop organised by DoxBox that really has put an emphasis on establishing a so-called industry section of the two year old festival. Mikael Opstrup and I tutor 6 filmmakers with projects and 6 with no projects. The projects have been selected by the organisation – there are people from Egypt, Syria and Lebanon. Most of the film proposals have a very personal starting point, very European I would say, the author driven film tradition, auteur tradition, thank you Truffaut and Godard, high quality, but little money to be found in this region. Most of them have been abroad, two live abroad, and they have collected some funding from foreign sources.

To generalise: The reason to support them and not the Europeans who come here for a couple of weeks or months to shoot their documentaries… they know their world much better, they live here, they have personal experiences and so on. It sounds banal, so why are there not more Arab documentaries shown in Europe. One thing is of course lack of knowledge from our side, and promotion from the part of the region, this is what DoxBox rightfully is working on, the other is that we ask for producers to be involved when we open for calls for the EDN development and pitching sessions, and the training sessions supported by the EU MEDIA Programme.

But we dont have producers in this region, they say, and those we have are not good enough. We can make everything by ourselves. Build teams from your own generation are our easy answers, easier said than done, but the only way. Workshop is over tomorrow monday, 6 two page project descriptions will be ready to be presented the days after, to invited funders and filmmakers. More about that later. Photo: Loyly Sief, Egypt.

www.dox-box.org

Share your love
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.

Articles: 3926