EFA and Copenhagen and Documentary
Below – in Danish – a critical text about yesterday’s broadcast produced by DR, our public broadcaster in Denmark. Today I met some of the participants at the party for European films, organised by European Film Academy, EFA. They had a good time last night and thought well of the Danish presenter, Mikael Bertelsen. Wish we had a man like that in our country, a Swiss film director said.
All right, but it does not make the Danish broadcast better… If the French/German works, you can check for yourself, those of you who can watch Arte tomorrow, monday night. ZDF/Arte’s fine Hans-Robert Eisenhauer told me that a 90 mins. version commented by himself will go on Arte and on the question if the documentary prize clip would go out (DR transmitted the whole 2 hours), he said NO.
Nevertheless there is big reason to blame EFA for giving documentary very low priority. The nominations for the documentary prize are made a long time before the ceremony, the winner, this year René by Czech Helena Trestikova, is appointed before the ceremony, unlike the other prizes, apparently because the EFA does not want to fly in the documentary nominees. For financial reasons? This prizegiving is something that needs to be done quickly so we can get to the real thing: the feature films. Many will say, the same old story, documentaries are not valued, and right they are. Nevertheless something needs to be changed, film director Arunas Matelis said to me. Next year in Vilnius, when the city is Cultural Capital of Europe, we want to bring nominees and documentary ceremony into the spotlight. I have talked to EFA about this. Wish him all the best luck!
