Of course ZagrebDox also has an industry section including a training workshop for 12 projects and a connected, public pitching session with 9 panelists. It took place March 1 in one of the cinemas in the Movieplex and attracted a good number of observers in the audience. To make a pitching session in a cinema is good for the trailers that are shown on a big screen, but problematic for the audience and the participants, as the pitchers were standing in half darkness, the same goes for the panelists seated in front of the screen, they were easy to hear, difficult to see.

The panel consisted of representatives from RTV Slovenia, MDR Germany, Al Jazeera Balkan, FTV BiH (Bosnia), YLE Finland, HRT Croatia, Croatian Audiovisual Centre, Taskovski Films, NOVA TV Croatia.

The 12 projects that came up for discussion were from the region, 5 of them from the hosting country. Two of the projects had been pitched at ZagrebDox before – Macedonian ”I’m Looking for a Bride” by Marja Dzidzeva and ”Vitic Dances” by Boris Bakal, about a famous house in Zagreb (built by Vitic) and its inhabitants and their fight to keep the house in good shape, and their fight with each other. Having this second chance shows either that the films have huge problems in getting funding and/or that the filmmakers have developed their stories and are stubborn and passionate people, as documentarians should be.

Two projects stood out, the rest being a bit mainstream or still weak in development. ”Birthday” (photo), however, came out of necessity. The producer Mina Vidakovic, a journalist, who works in den Haag reporting on the war tribunals, is also one of the two characters in the film. In 1992 she was celebrating her birthday 300 kilometer away from the house, where a kid survived while the rest of his family was killed by a paramilitary group. In the clip that was shown you see her meet the man at the place of the massacre. The idea is to show him and his son, and her life today after 20 years. Estimated duration is 28 mins. ”A story that needs to be told, where the inspiration comes to you, and not the other way around”, said Namik Kabil from Bosnian television. Kabil was by far the most remarkable panelist with his constructive and intelligent comments to the filmmakers.

The local production company Fade in, celebrated through a retrospective at the festival, pitched ”Sick”, a 52 mins. extremely strong and complex story that has been filmed over a period of years – about Ana, who was placed at a mental institution to be treated for her homosexuality (!), and who is now obsessed by the wish for revenge. 75% of the film is shot, I sense an important film coming up in a region where homophobia is very much present.

www.zagrebdox.net

Modern Times! Two films to reflect upon, both shot with a cell phone: Bosnian director Nedzad Begovic has made ”A Cell Phone Movie” (photo), and ”People I Could have Been and Maybe am” by Dutch Boris Gerrets.

The latter has been awarded at several festivals worldwide and is a nervous, in style, journey that takes the director and his camera, or should I write cell phone, to meet different characters, who live on the edge of society. He gets close to them, falls in love with one, a Brazilian woman, leaves them, comes back, all in a chaptered narrative with texts that update the situations and the development for the persons involved. It is all very pretentious and egocentered and constructed.

Whereas Begovic, who also made ”Totally Personal”, presents a wonderful playful personal essay about himself, a man in his fifties who starts to get health problems and uses his cell phone to communicate with family and friends, well to the whole world, in this film that shows what you can shoot with your cell phone, and what not. The film surprises its audience, it has a lot of these small moments that life is full of, Begovic has filmed grafitti sentences on walls that he has met on his way – like ”go and fuck your mother’s slippers”!!! – there are sequences that perform as a kind of video art, it is in other words a fresh piece of entertainment, sometimes crazy, sometimes dealing with serious problems, humorous. It must have a long festival life!

www.zagrebdox.net

ZagrebDox is also a place to catch up on films that you missed at idfa and Nenad Puhovski, the festival director and programmer, does not hide the fact that he does a good part of the film selection for his festival at the Amsterdam festival. And why should he, it is a mission in itself to bring the best of the best to the Croatian audience.

I saw ”Planet of Snail” by South Korean Seung-Jun Yi, who got the first prize at idfa, and it is a beautiful film, a love story about a deaf and blind man, and his woman, who helps him to navigate in this world. The film lets their daily life be depicted, but the story grows and we are invited to experience the man’s skills as a poet in words and action.

I had the chance to revisit the short film masterpiece of Russian Alina Rudnitskaya, ”I will forget this Day”, about women in a hospital waiting in a corridor to get in and have an abortion made, coming out later in a horizontal position. The stylistical competence of the director makes a film with few words emotionally extraordinarily strong.

You have to be careful using the word masterpiece, but this is the only way I can characterise the animation documentary by Romanian Anca Damian, ”Crulic – The Path to Beyond” (photo), which is artistically brilliant in its heartbreaking and anger provoking story about the Romanian man, who comes to Poland, is accused of stealing, put in prison, tries to explain that he could not have done this as he was on his way to Italy, but nobody listens, the bureaucracy ignores him, as does his country’s representative in Poland, he goes on hungerstrike, is not getting medical help and dies. A scandal that, if I got it right, made the Romanian minister of foreign affairs resign. The film is rich and attractive in its many animation effects, its many drawing styles, your hooked from the beginning, where his death is declared by himslef in first person. Wow for a film!

www.zagrebdox.net

This stunning film is a very appealing story about glaciers that are melting globally. A well-known photographer James Balog who has photographed nature (for National Geographic among others) for many years, had a deep concern of glaciers melting way faster than one could expect or even imagine. He created a team of photographers, filmmakers and technicians to start a project called Extreme Ice Survey. This team installed more than 50 cameras in Iceland, Greenland, Alaska and Montana in order to photograph glaciers that are constantly dissolving. Cameras were programmed to take a picture every hour throughout more than three years of time and time-lapses, in Chasing Ice coming together as horrifying, stunning footage.

The whole journey was portrayed in a very adventurous manner. Beautifully presented extreme changes that occurred during recent years helped to reveal the great damage that has been caused by us. Pictures ‘before’ and ‘after’ are nothing less but shocking. Moreover, James backed these pictures up with factual information. He is an activist and tries to visit as many conferences as possible that deal with climate change (one of them was COP15) in order to bring his study to masses as an eye opening experience.

The film is very convincing but must be seen on a big screen to strengthen its beautiful nature. Constantly changing landscape shapes, vivid colors and irrepressible power of melting glaciers in this wonderfully crafted film, must be seen and cannot impress the same way when retold.

USA, 2011, 75 mins. Seen at Sundance 2012

http://chasingice.com/

http://www.deadline.com/2012/01/national-geo-channel-buys-sundance-docu-chasing-ice/#more-221041

http://www.extremeicesurvey.org/

One more festival, and one of great importance. The following text is taken from the site of IDF (Institute of Documentary Film), that stands for a huge so-called industry programme parallel to the festival. It all takes place in Prague, March 6-15.

One World is the largest human rights documentary film festival in the world. This year, the festival opens in Prague followed by another 40 towns across the Czech Republic. The program features engaging and thought-provoking documentaries that promote a deeper understanding of political and social issues both in national and global contexts. On top of its year-round projects, One World also supports human rights film festivals abroad, e.g. the first annual Baghdad Eye Festival in Iraq in 2012.

Main Competition
The feature-length documentary films in this category will be competing for the Best Film and Best Director Awards, which will be presented by the Grand Jury. The Lithuanian-Finnish documentary Barzakh (photo) by Mantas Kvedaravicius is one of the 15 films in this section that also includes a number of festival hits, e.g., 5 Broken Cameras, Bombay Beach, Planet of Snail, Special Flight and The Tiniest Place.

Right to Know
This competition category presents feature-length documentaries that draw attention to unknown or suppressed issues linked to human rights. The winning film receives the Rudolf Vrba Award. 14 films will be presented in this section, including Belarusian Dream by Russian filmmaker Ekaterina

Kibalchich and the Chechen-themed Who Killed Natasha? by Mylène Sauloy, co-produced by France, Serbia, Croatia and the UK. Also watch out for the super successful Big Boys Gone Bananas!* or the ITVS-funded Invoking Justice.

Youth Quake
The selection does not focus just on the Arab Spring and uprisings in Tunisia, Syria, Egypt, Bahrain and Libya but also captures protests of young people in established democracies; here you’ll find Darkhead by Austrian filmmaker Arman T. Riahi; The New World by Estonian filmmaker Jaan Tootsen or Marshall Curry’s Oscar-nominated If a Tree Falls – A Story of the Earth Liberation Front. 

With or Without You
The films in this category show how the most varied of social influences – migration, poverty, institutional care, foster care and adoption – disrupt and complicate traditional family ties and relationships: e.g., the Austrian doc Mama Illegal by Ed Moschitz, included in East Silver 2012.

So-called Civilization
The documentaries in this category draw attention to mankind?s twisted relationship with the environment in which it lives and to the fact that humanity is destroying nature irrevocably through its ill-considered and reckless activities – e.g., The Magical Journey of Useless Things by Katja Schupp, Detroit Wild City, Chernobyl Forever, and You’ve Been Trumped.

Panorama
This category offers a selection of highly-rated documentary films that have in the last two years received a great deal of attention at international festivals, where some picked up prestigious prizes – screening, for instance, Bakhmaro by Georgian filmmaker Salome Jashi; El Medico – The Cubaton Story by Daniel Fridell; Argenitinian Lesson by Wojciech Staron, and Victor Kossakovsky’s ¡Vivan las Antipodas!

Czech Films
As each year, One World presents Czech documentary films shot in the previous year to both Czech audiences and foreign guests – Big as Brno; From Cherries to Cherries; Into Oblivion; Love in the Grave; Punk in Africa; Race to the Bottom; Solar Eclipse; The Tripoint; Trafacka – Temple of Freedom.

People in Need – 20 Years
This retrospective category is included in the programme on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the foundation of one of the biggest non-profit organisations in Central Europe and the organiser of the festival, the People in Need foundation. Films, videos and photographs online at www.ceskatelevize.cz/jedensvet.

For more details on all programmes and films, please visit One World.

http://www.dokweb.net/cs

The 8th edition of a festival that has a strong programme with an international competition programme, a regional one, a retrospective with star director Jay Rosenblatt, a section with controversial documentaries like Mads Brügger’s ”The Ambassador” (photo) and Fredrik Gertten’s ”Big Boys Gone Bananas!”, music documentaries, a selection of 14 films from the Danish Film School, a retrospective of Baltic documentaries from the last ten years selected by this blogger. And several other good offers to documentary people in the Croatian Capital. A small pitching session is also organised, as before, where regional projects are presented to a panel of potential investors.

The international competition programme of 29 long and short films includes among others ”5 Broken Cameras” by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, ”Bakhmaro” by Salomé Jashi from Georgia, ”I will forget this Day” by Russian Alina Rudnitskaya, ”Phnom Penh Lullaby” by Polish Pawel Kloc, ”Ramin” by Lithuanian Audrius Stonys and ”The Will” by Christian Sønderby Jepsen from Denmark.

The regional competition of 20 films presents fine films like Romanian ”Noosfera” by Ileana Stanculescu and Artchil Khetagouri, Stefan Valdobrev’s portrait of a football fanatic ”My Mate Manchester United” and Nikolas Geyerhalter’s ”Abendland”. Plus a lot of films that I am in the lucky position not to have seen, yet, including ”Family Meals” by Dana Budisavljevic.

Reports will be posted from ZagrebDox, a festival created and run by the tireless Nenad Puhovski. And a PS. The website of ZagrebDox is clear, beautiful to look at, competent in text and full of trailers to watch. Bravo!

http://zagrebdox.net/en/2012/home

It is a good programme that the organisers of the Swedish documentary film festival has put together for ”a six-day-long documentary party” in Stockholm March 6-11.

New Swedish documentaries in competition, among them Fredrik Gertten’s ”Big Boys Gone Bananas” and Michel Wenzer’s ”At Night I Fly”, which recently got the national award Guldbaggan as best documentary. A retrospective and masterclass with Nick Broomfield and Joan Churchill. Music documentaies. A selection by local alternative orgnisation Filmcentrum.

AND, very interesting, a new award that carries the name of local icon Stefan Jarl. Six films compete for the ”Stefan Jarl International Documentary Award”: The magnificent ”5 Broken Cameras” by Emad Burnat & Guy Davidi, a film that deservedly travels all over with its both alarming and touching story from the occupied territories in apartheid Israel. ”Bombay Beach” by Alma Har’el, ”Inside Lara Roxx” by Mia Donovan, fascinating ”Phnom Penh Lullaby” by Polish Pawel Kluc, impressive ”Cinema Komunisto” by Mila Turajlic and Idfa winner 2011 ”Planet of Snail” by South Korean Seungjun Yi. Happy that I am not a juror with such a line-up of strong films! 

http://www.tempofestival.se/english/

Nick Fraser, commissioning editor at BBC’s Storyville, wrote an article for The Observer (February 5), constructed as a diary from and about the Sundance Film Festival, where ” I have two films in the American competition. I am also judging films for the world documentary jury.”

Among many observations about being a juror, and about the worry of whether ”his” film ”The House I live in” (photo) by Eugene Jarecki – read the whole article – would get an award or not, it did win,  Fraser, in a for him very unusual situation, writes about being nervous before sitting in a panel with the founder of Sundance:

”There are lots of ways of celebrating one’s birthday. This year I’m spending mine with Robert Redford – on a panel to discuss documentaries – and I am distinctly nervous. But I notice similar symptoms in the other guest – the redoubtable Sheila Nevins , head of documentaries at HBO and acknowledged queen of the genre in the US. We exchange anxieties. How will we behave in the presence of cinema royalty? Do we call him Bob, Robert or Mr Redford? We cannot decide. Stuck in ski resort traffic, he arrives late, and it is reassuring to find that near-deities are subject to the same vicissitudes as the rest of us.”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2012/feb/05/sundance-diary-nick-fraser-storyville