It’s one festival after the other publishing its programme. Lisbon, Leipzig, Amsterdam and today there is a programme party in Copenhagen for cph:dox…

Idfa programme yesterday, the biggest festival in audience numbers and considered to be the most important – this is where all documentary filmmakers wish to have their films shown, and where all professionals have to be for the industry activities, first of all the forum. If you are not there, colleagues might think that you have stopped making documentaries or your company has closed…

It is amazing and overwhelming – take a look at the second link below, 7 competition programmes and 15 (fifteen!) side programmes. Rithy Panh makes the Top Ten according to his personal choice, great films like ”Don’t Look Back” (Pennebaker), Joris Ivens ”A Tale of the Wind”, Pedro Costa’s ”In Vanda’s Room” and a pearl, forgotten by most people: ”Farrebique – the Four Seasons” from1946 by Georges Rouquier.

For historical interested there is this gift: “Next year is the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of World War I. To mark this occasion, eight documentaries dealing with World War I will screen at the upcoming IDFA. These are films made between 1917 and 1928 and come from the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany and the UK. The selection was made with researcher David Barnouw of the NIOD, media historian Bert Hogenkamp of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision and silent film conservator at EYE Elif Rongen-Kaynakci. The films will be introduced by experts and after the screening, discussions will take place with the audience on the meaning of the films in a historical context.”

Competition for feature length documentaries, 15 films, let me mention 3 of them that I know about: “Life Almost Wonderful” by Bulgarian Svetoslav Draganov, “Return to Homs” by Talal Derki and “The Wild Years” by Ventura Durall (PHOTO).

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/festival.aspx

http://www.idfa.nl/industry/festival/program-sections.aspx

Big numbers in the press release of DOK Leipzig, sent out yesterday with an announcement of the so-called official programme. 56th edition, ” a total of 88 films from 34 countries will compete in the five competition categories. While there is a particularly strong presence of traditional film production countries like Poland, France, and Great Britain, the line-up also includes countries like Bolivia, Myanmar, Nepal, or Syria. 2,240 films from 114 countries were submitted, a total of well over 3,000 films were previewed.”

And it goes on with more facts in the press release, “overall, 346 films will be screened in the various sections and Special Programmes: 187 documentaries, 116 animations, and 43 Animadoc productions. 24 among the 109 films in the official documentary film programme of the 56th edition of DOK Leipzig will be world premieres, 24 international premieres, 7 European premieres and 47 German premieres. The large percentage of prestigious names and former award winners whose films enrich the programme is a particularly positive development.”

Prestigious names… yes, there is a good spread from a classical documentary approach from Volker Koepp, who brings a new title, “In Sarmatia”, to the two Russian documentarians Vitaly Mansky and Marina Razbezhkina and to Danish master Jon Bang Carlsen’s “Just the Right Amount of Violence”, a film that has not yet had its Danish cinema release, as usual with Carlsen on his way to find new ways of exploration and introspection. Bravo also for taking Robert Kirchhoff’s “Normalization” (PHOTO) to the competititon, whereas it is a surprise that “Hilton – Here for Life” by Finnish Virpi Suutari has been chosen.

In the Young Cinema Competititon it is great, for a former Zelig Film School teacher, to find the graduation film of Yuri Mazumdar, a beautiful work from India, “Kalyug”, as well as “The Last Black Sea Pirates” by Bulgarian Svetoslav Stoyanov and “Sickfuckpeople” by Juri Rechinsky.

For me DOK Leipzig is for social and political documentaries, with films from all over the world, with a strong thematic focus, maybe more for the brain than for the heart? I will go there for some days, with pleasure, to a festival that is always very well organised in cosy Leipzig.

Side programmes, of course, take a look at the website, there are focus on Brazil, retro of Peter Liechti and much more. Let the festival director have the last word: “Documentary film today displays an extraordinary wealth of themes and amazing stylistic devices,” says Claas Danielsen. “The genre has long since left its niche to win over a wide audience.” Right he is!

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

The programme of the 11th edition of the DocLisboa, that starts October 24 and ends November 3, was made public yesterday. Again you just have to say Respect! For the quality of the selection and for side programmes like ”Research”, ”New Visions” (curated by charismatic critic Augusto M. Deabra) and first of all the section ”Moving Stills – Photography, Photographers and Documentary Films”.

Under that (the latter) caption you will find excellently composed 80-90 compilations of short and longer documentaries grouped as ”self-portraits” (Robert Frank, Man Ray…), ”family albums” (Ingmar Bergman), ”Questioning the Image” (Godard, Farocki…), ”Surviving Images” (Agnès Varda…) or ”The Point of View of the Photographer” (Johan van der Keuken’s ”To Sang Fotostudio”, photo).

The festival includes several competiton sections: feature duration (with Avi Mograbi’s ”Once I entered a Garden” and films by Wang Bing, Anand Patwardhan and many others I have never heard about), a Portuguese section, international and short film competitions and much much more.

With a big retrospective of films by French master Alain Cavalier – do you remember ”Thérèse”, his wonderful film from 1986?

http://www.doclisboa.org/2013/en/

It is not only in Colombia – see below – that festival organisers play with the word closeness between docs and dogs, when a new fest is to be launched. Look at the logo for a festival that starts today (and runs for a week) in the capital of Bulgaria and introduces itself like this:

”SOFIA BITING DOCS presents a selection of high quality documentary films representing human rights topics, environmental problems, integration of diversity groups into the society and other controversial topics raising discussions and arguments.

The festival crew is planning to organize different accompanying events within its frames such as discussions, workshops and lectures, giving popularity of many interesting, but inconvenient issues.

The event is organized by Pozor Company with the support of One World Film Festival in Prague, Czech Centre – Sofia and Kino Iztok Foundation.”

Yes, documentaries are being used in a festival context to create debate about important issues. Among the films are Vitaly Manski Cuba-film ”Motherland or Death” and Lauren Greenfield’s ”Queen of Versailles”… One World-films can also be humorous and some of them bite.

http://www.sofiabitingdocs.com/welcome.html

… which (Medellin) is a city in Colombia that October 15-20 will have its first documentary festival, built on the DocsBarcelona model with film screenings and industry activities, all thought out by Joan Gonzalez from Parallel40 in the Catalan capital, the name of a person who has appeared again and again in filmkommentaren. He has put this new festival together together with his brilliant staff, including Angels Vilars who runs the Parallel40 office in Colombia.

I have tried to ask Gonzalez, a friend and colleague since the 1990’es, why a pipe-smoking dog is on the poster of the festival, no answer, but from a former pipe smoker, dog walker and docs addicted person… no objections.

On the programme of the festival (Spanish language films primarily) are “Pura Vida” by Pablo Iraburu, the strong film about Inaki, the mountain climber and the international solidarity that grew in order to try get him down from high up – and Chico Pereira’s warm “Pablo’s Winter” – and Fredrik Gertten’s documentary blockbuster “Big Boys Gone Bananas!”. Here is the text from the press release about the festival:  

DocsBarcelona has gone a step further in its history: after a year’s work, we proudly inform you that at the end of October we will celebrate the first edition of DocsBarcelona+Medellín, the experience of the festival you already know, now in Colombia!


Stories from Zimbabwe, India, Chile, Spain, Colombia and Uruguay will turn Medellin during 6 days into the heart of documentary.

The program will present 15 films out of a selection of documentaries mostly screened at DocsBarcelona in previous editions, all of them with a large international career.

The documentary Serrat & Sabina: Two for the road (El símbolo y el cuate), directed by journalist and correspondent Francesc Relea about the acclaimed Spanish singer-songwriters Joaquín Sabina and Joan Manel Serrat, will open the festival, being the American premiere.

The festival program will be completed with an agenda of industry activities such as master classes with guest directors, rou gh cut sessions with documentary professionals and an Executive Production Workshop-Seminar by Joan Gonzàlez, director of the production company Parallel40 and of DocsBarcelona and its edition in Medellin.

DocsBarcelona+Medellin  will take place at Parque Explora, at the Cultural Center of the Arts Faculty of the Antioquia University, at the Eafit University and in the Lido Theatre.


http://docsbarcelonamedellin.com/

The following text was sent to filmkommentaren.dk by the organisers of Doclisboa’13:

Iranian director Mohammad Rasoulof is barred from leaving his country, he will not be able to attend Doclisboa’13. Mohammad Rasoulof has been invited to chair the Jury of the International Competition of the 11th Doclisboa – International Film Festival, in Portugal.

The Iranian director went back to Iran 10 days ago and had since his passport confiscated. The authorities refuse to let him leave the country and he is not authorised to travel until “new order”, or attend any festivals presenting his latest film ”Manuscripts don’t Burn”.

In these circumstances, Doclisboa organisation has decided to leave Mohammad Rasoulof’s place as President of the Jury empty, as an act of support and solidarity with the Iranian filmmaker.

Doclisboa finds it not acceptable that he is deprived to leave the country and will contribute in every possible way to make clear that Rasoulof is being held against his will and hindered to exercise his job as a director and filmmaker.

Additionally, Rasoulof was supposed to attend the German premiere of the film at Hamburg Film Festival on Tuesday evening, October 1st, and to accept a lifetime achievement award on October 8th at the Nuremburg International Human Rights Film Festival, in Germany.

The closing session of the 11th Doclisboa is going to show ”Manuscripts don’t Burn”, to be held on Saturday, November 2nd. The film tells the story of an Iranian author who manages to secretly write down his memoirs, related to his time in jail as a political prisoner…

http://www.doclisboa.org/2013/en/home/

The 1st international documentary film festival in the Caucasus runs from 15-20 October. The organiser is the Noosfera Foundation supported by – among others – the Idfa Bertha Fund and Georgian National Film Center.

The festival has an International Competititon section as well as a Focus Caucasus, a Georgian Panorama and a CinéDoc Young.

For the International section 10 films have been picked. According to the organizers, they are ” artistic, inspiring, daring in form and storytelling”. I would add that the list of films (check the website) is wonderfully different from the usual documentary festival programmes, spreading from the original ”The Other Day” by Chilean Ignaciao Agüero to heartbreaking Russian ”Linar” by Nastia Tarasova and the impressive, by the bigger festivals, overseen no-Lukashenko-in-picture-documentary from Belarus, ”Igrushki” by Lina Luzyte from Lithuania. More known in the festival circuit are titles like Moroccan Karima Zoubir’s strong ”Camera Woman” and Polish Pawel Kloc’s masterpiece ”Pnomh Penh Lullaby”.

The Caucasus Focus offers 8 films including Georgian ”The English Teacher” by Nino Orjonikidze & Vano Arsenishvili, Armenian ”The Last Tightrope Dancer in Armenia” by Arman Yeritsyan & Inna Sahakyan, Russian ”Two sides of One Horse” by Tatyana Soboleva – to mention those I have seen or heard about in beforehand.

A workshop runs parallel to the festival, DocStories Georgia, a continuation of the initiative from 2012, DocStories BlackSea. 10 Georgian projects, represented by directors and producers, have been selected to meet and be tutored by experienced filmmakers and consultants like Peter Symes UK, Uldia Cekulis Latvia, Hans-Robert Eisenhauer Germany, Irena Taskovski UK, Isabel Arrate Holland, Goran Radovanovic Serbia, Paul Pauwels Belgium and the one who writes these lines – who with Pauwels and Victoria Belopolski Russia will form the jury of the festival.

Exciting initiative in beautiful Tbilisi, and those who have been there before know what I mean, when I don’t say Hurra but ChaCha!

http://www.cinedoc-tbilisi.com/

http://www.docstories-blacksea.com/