Four new Lithuanian documentaries will be screened at the Scanorama Festival that runs from November 7 till 24 in the cities Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipeda and Siaiulia. As the name of the festival indicates it has its roots in the North with references to Bergman and von Trier – as is mentioned on the site of the festival – but now it claims to cover the whole of Europe.

Filmneweurope.com – that has a good eye for documentaries – writes this today:

Four Lithuanian documentaries, including one Lithuanian/German coproduction, will have their premieres during the Scanorama film festival, which takes place 7- 24 November 2013 in four cities across Lithuania.

The films include the long-awaited film from Audrius Stonys, Cenotaph (Studio Uljana Kim) (photo), the story of a grave holding three unknown soldiers – two Russians and a German – and the present-day quest to explore it.

J. Jackie Baier will return to Scanorama two years after the festival screened her documentary film House of Shame with Julia, a film about a transsexual runaway Lithuanian girl who ends up in Germany working as a prostitute before returning to her home town years later. The Lithuanian-German film was screened at Venice.

Ričardas Marcinkus will introduce the documentary film Final Destination, selected for a program at Amsterdam Documentary Film festival (IDFA) about 55 year old man released from prison with nowhere to go and caught up in drugs.

The latest film by a poet, singer and theatre and cinema director Vytautas V. Landsbergis is Tricolour (A. Propos Studija), a portrait of the freedom fighters, twelve former partisans and postal workers, and their journey from home to battle to post-war life….

http://www.scanorama.lt/en/

http://www.filmneweurope.com/

This is the press release from the festival:

The 56th International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film, DOK Leipzig, culminated on Saturday night with a festive closing ceremony. Seventeen prizes totalling €69,500 were presented at the awards ceremony in the Schauspiel Leipzig. It was already apparent on the penultimate day of the festival that with 1,705 accreditations and huge crowds in the cinemas, DOK Leipzig was set to reach new records for the number of industry guests and visitors.

The winners: “Stop the Pounding Heart” (photo) (USA, Belgium, Italy) by Roberto Minervini was honoured with the prestigious Golden Dove in the International Competition Documentary Film. The award comes with €10,000 and is sponsored by MITTELDEUTSCHER RUNDFUNK. The top prize was presented by MDR Director Karola Wille for the first time.

The Golden Dove for Best Animated Film, which comes with a cash prize of €5,000, was given to the Slovenian entry “Boles” by Špela Čade. The Silver Dove in the Animated Film category, which comes with a €2,000 cash award, went to Academy Award-winner Chris Landreth from Canada for his film “Subconscious Password”.

The €10,000 Golden Dove in the German Competition Documentary Film went to Carlo Zoratti for his film “The Special Need”.

The Talent Dove of the Media Foundation of the Sparkasse Leipzig, the top prize in the Young Cinema Competition, went to Kaveh Bakhtiari for the Swiss-French production “L’Escale” (“Stop-Over”). The prize money of €10,000 is intended to serve as seed funding for the Iranian-born director’s next documentary project.

In the International Short Documentary Competition, the Indian entry “Distance” was honoured with a Golden Dove. Ekta Mittal and Yashaswini Raghunandan will receive a cash prize of €3,000 from TELEPOOL GmbH.

The first-ever Golden Dove for Best Animated Documentary went to Daniela De Felice for the French production “Casa”. The first-of-its-kind award for the animation-documentary hybrid form comes with €3,000.

The €8,000 Healthy Workplaces Film Award from the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) was awarded to the Brazilian filmmaker Aly Muritiba for his film “A gente” (“C(us)todians”). The MDR Film Prize for an outstanding East European documentary film, with a cash award of €3,000, went to “Die Trasse” (“Pipeline”) by the Russian filmmaker Vitaly Mansky. The DEFA Sponsorship Award for an outstanding German documentary, which comes with a stipend of €4,000, was received by Yael Reuveny (Germany, Israel) for her film “Schnee von gestern” (“Farewell, Herr Schwarz”).

The Documentary Film Prize of the Goethe Institute, with a cash award of €2,000, went to Judith Keil and Antje Kruska for their film “Land in Sicht” (“Land in Sight”). The Prize of the Ecumenical Jury, which comes with a €2,000 cash award and is given by the VCH-Hotels Germany GmbH – a part of the Association of Christian Hoteliers – including the Michaelis Hotel in Leipzig, was given to Robert Kirchhoff (Slovakia) for “Kauza Cervanová” (“Normalization”).

The FIPRESCI Jury awarded its prize to Gang Zhao (China) for “A Folk Troupe”. For “Hilton! – Täällä ollaan elämä” (“Hilton! – Here For Life”), Virpi Suutari was honoured with the Prize of the Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft ver.di, which comes with €2,500 in award money. The Prize of the Youth Jury of the Leipzig Film School was presented to Aneta Kopacz for her film “Joanna”. The mephisto 97.6 Audience Award was determined by public vote. It went to Robert Löbel for his animated film “Wind”.

The “Leipziger Ring” film award from the Stiftung Friedliche Revolution, with a cash prize of €5,000, was awarded on Friday in Leipzig’s St. Nicholas Church, which in autumn 1989 was the starting point for the large Monday Demonstrations. The award went to the iranian documentary filmmaker Nahid Persson Sarvestani, who lives in Norway, for her film “Min stulna revolution” (“My Stolen Revolution”). One of the protagonists of the film, Monireh Baradaran, accepted the award at the ceremony on behalf of the director.

It was already apparent on the penultimate day of the festival that the number of visitors last year (37,600) was easily surpassed and could reach the 40,000 mark. The number of accredited industry guests also reached an all-time high of 1,705 (1,526 last year).

Well, I have to confess that I was not at the cinema this year at DOK Leipzig! Shame on you, many will think and right they are. There is nothing but sitting in a big cinema with big screen with a big audience sharing an experience. But I have for three days from 9am in the morning seen a lot of films at the DOK Markt scouting for other festivals, to get updated on what goes on and to forward my impressions through this website.

The DOK Markt is wonderfully organised. You go there, you have made your reservation in beforehand, 415 films from 71 countries are available, digitalised, so you give your benutzername and password number, find your title, click, and there you have the film on a fine screen with good quality in a hall where the temperature makes you stay fresh – the air condition in the Museum für Bildende Kunst, where the video library is placed, is pretty effective! After you have screened the film, you can send an email to the contact person of the film if you wish to have the film for your tv station or festival or greet the maker with nice words.

No objections in other words, the same goes for the meeting place downstairs in the lobby of the museum: accreditation and information desk, a café, meeting area in corners, easy to find people and to be found. Relaxed. And close to everything in cosy Leipzig.

And the place to have a quick talk with an old friend Claas Danielsen, who is festival director in his 10th year, announcing that 2014 will be his last one. Danielsen has done a great work to make DOK Leipzig what it is today, a meeting place with strong competitive programmes, a strong many faceted industry programme without forgetting film history and masterclasses with important directors and a look at other continents and countries like India, Brazil, Chile…

One of the best films I saw, maybe the best was Russian “Optical Axis” by Marina Razbezhkina, (photo).

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/

You meet colleagues in Leipzig. Of course, a banality. But when do you meet a man with the first name Teddy from California, who starts to speak good Danish to you… We had been in contact before and he had sent some phrases in my language, well anyone can do so with a bit of using the google translate. But the reason for his Danish is that Teddy Grouya decades ago was a student in Denmark. He is now a filmmaker and programmer of the American Documentary Film Festival, whose site I took this text from: In addition to the annual Film Festival (last year, ed.), which featured more than 100 documentary features, shorts and animated films on four screens in  both Palm Springs and Rancho Mirage in 2013, we are proud to share the American Documentary Film Fund with independent American filmmakers, who will participate and compete for financing for new projects, as well as projects currently in progress.

The festival takes place in Palm Springs California March 27-31 next year, and this is what Teddy Grouya asked me to post, which I do with pleasure:

We are getting down to crunch time, and our 2014 Festival is rapidly approaching! Our Call for Entries continues, but the regular submission deadline for filmmakers is December 5th. Full details are available on our web site at

http://www.americandocumentaryfilmfestival.com/

I was lucky to meet Greek Dimitra Kouzi again at DOK Leipzig. She is a journalist, former ERT, now in various jobs where her skills can be used, and they are many. Her love for documentaries is evident and if you go to her blog, link below, you will find, as an example, a very useful coverage of a session on festivals made here in Leipzig as part of the industry section. ”Are you looking for a festival” is the headline of one of her postings – there is a need for information – countless are the questions that I have had during these Leipzig days from young filmmakers, who stand with their dvd in hand and have no clue to which festivals they should send it.

Back to Dimitra Kouzi, who was the presentator at the succesful Greek Day on arte on August 15 this year, where several strong documentaries were shown, and back in Athens, if she is not doing work in Germany, she is one of the three, who stand behind the impressive Cinedoc documentary festival, the other two are producer Rea Apostolides and director Avra Georgiu.

In her blog Kouzi introduces the 2013-14 season like this: This year, the CineDoc documentary festival opens with the award-winning documentary The Cleaners (photo) by Konstantinos Georgoussis.
In June 2012, the far-right Greek political party Golden Dawn came from nowhere to win seven percent of the parliamentary vote. Without commentary, the film follows a number of party members during primary elections in central Athens. In disturbing and overtly radical terms, the men air their grievances about the scapegoat for all ills: the growing number of immigrants. In cafés and squares, they enter into discussion with supporters and opponents, keeping a sharp eye on migrant passersby.
Konstantinos Georgoussis, a graduate of the National Film and Television School of the UK, has directed and produced the film in a unique way…

As for the festival programme, please check the site below.

http://www.cinedoc.gr/

dimitrakouzi.files.wordpress.com

DOKLeipzig director for 10 years Claas Danielsen made, as he always does, a welcome speech that went far beyond the usual thanks to sponsors and audience and guests. I have taken a couple of sequences from his German language speech:

Eine der wichtigsten Eigenschaften guter Dokumentarfilme ist, dass sie uns Angst nehmen. Sie helfen uns, das Schreckliche in der Welt anzuerkennen und es an uns heranzulassen – manchmal ubrigens auch das unfassbar Schöne, das wir genauso wegschieben, wenn wir fürchten, es zu verlieren.

Denn die Dokumentaristen widmen sich oft dem Schicksal einzelner Menschen – aufrichtig, wahrhaftig und mit Geduld. Mit diesen Protagonisten können wir uns als Zuschauer verbinden. Wer die syrische Familie in Reem Karsslis Film begleitet hat, für den haben die unter dem Bürgerkrieg leidenden Menschen ein Gesicht bekommen.

Und wer die iranischen Jugendlichen in Kaveh Bakhtiaris Film „Stop-Over“ dabei beobachtet, wie sie verzweifelt und oft unter Todesgefahr versuchen, in den Westen Europas zu gelangen, wird bei den Bildern von Migranten an den hochgesicherten Außengrenzen Europas nicht mehr gleichgültig wegschauen können.

Gute Dokumentarfilme informieren nicht, sie verändern uns. Dokumentarfilme machen das Verdrängte empfindbar. Aus der abstrakten Bedrohung und undefinierbaren Angst wird ein konkretes Schicksal und damit ein Gefühl, das uns nicht mehr überfordert. Das Verdrängte wird „verständlich“, also für unseren Verstand greifbar. Dadurch öffnet sich eine Tür, ein neuer Weg wird sichtbar, heraus aus der Lähmung, hinein in das aktive Handeln. Auch auf

psychischer Ebene kann so Heilung geschehen. Das ist die einzigartige Kraft des Dokumentarfilms, er wirkt dem Verdrängen entgegen und öffnet unser Herz und unseren Geist.

Das, was sich dann zeigt, mag oft verwirrend und komplex sein. Denn die Welt und die Zeit, in der wir leben, sind vielschichtig, unübersichtlich und ständig in Bewegung.

…….

Warum hat es der erzählerische, künstlerische Dokumentarfilm dann jenseits der Filmfestivals so schwer? Warum erkennen nur noch so wenige Entscheidungsträger in den Fernsehanstalten, wie gut sie diesen Schatz nutzen könnten. Anstatt dessen schieben sie ihn oft ins programmliche Abseits, dörren ihn finanziell aus oder wickeln ihn ganz ab. Und das in Zeiten, in denen Kritiker das öffentlichrechtliche System grundsätzlich in Frage stellen. Am Geld kann es angesichts der günstigen Minutenpreise und der langen Lebensdauer der Dokumentarfilme nicht liegen. Es fehlt an Mut und Wertschätzung.

Ich frage mich: Hat die kompromisslose Suche der Dokumentarfilmer nach Wahrhaftigkeit etwas Bedrohliches? Sind Leidenschaft und Idealismus dem Zuschauer nicht mehr zuzumuten? Ist das Ringen um eine moralische Haltung in einer Zeit der Umbrüche unseriös? Ist der Kampf um Würde, Respekt und Menschlichkeit aus der Mode gekommen? Was verdrängen all jene, die diese Art von unformatierten und unbequemen Filmen nicht mehr zeigen wollen? Warum ziehen es viele aufrechte, couragierte und unbequeme Redakteure vor, die Funkhäuser zu verlassen, anstatt weiter für ihre Sendeplätze und Individualität im Programm zu kämpfen?

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/

Sevara Pan is in Leipzig for the festival and writes with enthusiasm about one of the so-called industry activities: Spanned over 3 days, Leipzig Networking Days celebrated its finale on the warm Sunday afternoon of October 27^th. Initiated by Documentary Campus, Leipzig Networking Days is an annual pitching and networking event that hosts over 200 industry professionals from around the world. This year, the event commenced with the opening keynote, given by Jens Schmelzle, the founder of Simpleshow, a global leading company that helps simplify internal and external communication. “Keep it simple” was the key of his message – the conspicuous precept we are all aware of, yet hardly few of us apply in practice. This advertising principle, Schmelzle reckoned, could be well employed in filmmaking or storytelling in general. Starting off with the essential core, he presumed, gives an opportunity to lay a foundation to build up the narrative, ornament it with nuances, and parlay with luscious minutiaes.

The next two days of the event were dedicated to pitching of 16 documentary projects developed within the Masterschool 2013, 2 guest projects from the MENA programme (the Middle East and North Africa programme: http://www.documentary-campus.com/v2/page/contact/), and 3 guest projects by Documentary Campus Member Companies. The pitches were then followed-up by a number of panel discussions as well as scheduled one-to-one meetings with 30 commissioning editors from promiment broadcasting companies – ZDF/ARTE, MDR, ITVS, LIC China, and Channel 4 – to name a few.

From the lost generation of the bleak Russian garbage dump “svalka,” to the frenetic journey of the LGBT countercultural movement Queercore with its roots in punk, to the backchannel of the Austrian Chancellor Kreisky and PLO-fighter Sartawi, and onto the veil behind the theft of the Chagossian nation – the unbridled diversity of projects was captivating. While some touched and inspired, others intrigued and left wondering. There was room for every shade of emotion, taking turns in the laboratory of mind with the sweeping gait of the 8-minute pitch. But was there “room for a man?” At the brink of solemnity of the event, there was also a leeway for humor and wit. In the company of a 25-year old Lebanese Anthony on his odyssey to seek out an answer to the existential question of manhood, suddenly we found ourselves within a 4m² space, hedged in by Anthony’s outspoken mother Nicole, perplexing older sister Romy, frisky doberman Velvet, and a “handy and virile” construction worker that embodies “the essence of masculinity.”

Leipzig Networking Days culminated with the award for the best pitch, handed out by Chris Black, the marketplace manager of Sheffield Doc/Fest, one of the Documentary Campus long-term partners. The pitch award was genially granted to the polish filmmaker Hanna Polak (project Yula’s Dream) for her 13-year-old commitment to the story, chronicling an extraordinary journey of 11-year-old Yula growing up in the black hole of the metropolis, at the outskirts of the Moscow garbage dump, and her ultimate breaking out to a better life at the age of 25.

To put it in a few words. Leipzig Networking Days was a success. Bright smiles, enthusiasm about the new and the upcoming, but most importantly, a genuine love for documentary films were pivotal for the event to run par excellence.