Leena Pasanen Makes Radical Changes

… at DOK Leipzig, a press release announces from the festival. Like American presidents the new director of the important festival has chosen to reveal her changes after her first 100 days in office! Here comes most of the press release from yesterday:

… Most substantially, the division between documentary and animated films in the competitions will be abolished.  “It is a bold move, but this is how I see DOK Leipzig – fresh and bold,” says Pasanen. “The international competition among festivals is fierce.  We want to stand out with our cutting-edge approach to storytelling and our unpredictable programming. We will have a festival that is surprising its audience every year.”

This year’s Retrospective looks at the 25th anniversary of German reunification and provides the occasion to look at disintegrating (national) borders and emerging new identities – from a global perspective, too.

The Country Focus this year will be on South Korea, a country with a vibrant – and commercially successful – documentary film industry that is more or less unknown in Germany. The English filmmaker and video artist John Smith will be honoured with a Homage. He will also choose the winner of the “Next Masters” Competition (formerly known as Young Cinema Competition) and personally award the Golden Dove of the Sparkasse Media Foundation.

But it’s not just in this competition section that DOK Leipzig proves itself as a Festival that’s young in spirit. There will be a special programme for young people: “Bodycheck”, dedicated to exploring the difficult relationship with one’s own body. Current politics will be addressed in the special programme about Animadoc from Hungary. A programme devoted exclusively to animations will present animated films from the heart of Africa.

There have also been some personnel changes: Grit Lemke was promoted to head of all film programming and will be assisted by Lars Meyer and Annegret Richter. Brigid O’Shea is the new head of the Industry section…

The 1st call for Entries for the 58th edition of DOK Leipzig was announced today.

http://www.dok-leipzig.de

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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.

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