Personal Archive Documentaries

At the Archidoc training session at the la fémis film school in Paris yesterday, where ten projects were presented to a panel of producers, broadcasters and festival representatives, two so-called hybrid documentary projects stood out as upcoming films that are to be built on private archive footage of professional character.

Seb Farges has been filming his life with different girl friends for 20 years, in New York, with different technical equipment. An obsession he said at the pitching session about his project called ”Womanmanhattan”, an autobiographical story about a man who hides behind his camera, filming the girls and NY. But now, being 40 years old, it has to come to an end. I intend to go to Bratislava with Vladislava, a new girl friend, and she will, with her skills in docu-animation, help me find out what has happened with me, constructing a mental map. Serge Fabrege has for years put his footage on his vimeo website that has had more than 500.000 followers. Fabrege showed a trailer with material that due to the dialogue between him and Vladislava (photo presents the two of them, Seb and Vladislava) had a humourous distance-creating approach that was very much appreciated by the audience.

Portuguese José Fernandes has also been filming his life and love stories. Through six years. His film project, conveyed through an aesthetically attractive style, called ”Lily, Sachi and Me”, contains a story about the director travelling to Italy to fall in love with a Japanese popstar, going with her to Japan, leaving her again to seek freedom in California, where he falls in love with a girl from South Korea. He goes with her to her country, where he gets a call from the Japanese girl who wants him to come back to Japan. José Fernandes is obviously a great cinematic talent and I trust that he can make a film that follows in the footstep of other travellers, who are fascinated by Asian culture, Wim Wenders with his ”Tokyo-Ga” and Chris Marker with his masterpiece the essay ”Sans Soleil”.

Private stories made public, and in the hands of talented filmmakers, universal, why not, the interest to share every little thing from your private life is evident on facebook, and in these two upcoming films. Watch out for them!

http://vimeo.com/sebfarges

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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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