Talking Documentaries
It was a person in the audience, who appealed to the panel: We are world famous for our writers – Joyce, Beckett etc. – now it must be time to become known for our films. He, and around 100 other filmmakers and film students attended the Talking Documentary two-day seminar that ended yesterday in Galway. Organised by the MEDIA Antenna and the Galway Film Center the two days had a programme with money and slot and strand and distribution and profile and policy issues on the first day AND content and style and ethics on the second. I chaired the first day sessions with Christina Mueller from DR/TV Denmark, Gitte Hansen from First Hand Films in Switzerland and Sari Volanen from YLE – in the morning – and with the whole range of documentary broadcasters and funding mechanisms in the afternoon. The morning was quiet and full of great clips from films like “Armadillo“, “Burma vj” and “Steam of Life“, whereas there was a nice atmosphere of opposition to the panel in the afternoon, where especially the representatives from the public broadcaster RTE was met with demands for more flexibility in the scheduling and in the fact that whenever the broadcaster enters into coproduction, there HAS to be an Irish angle. The RTE is not positive towards feature duration documentaries, even if this seems to be the current success in Ireland, very much because of the policy of the Irish Film Board. The film that is on the international agenda right now is “The Pipe” (PHOTO), that was premiered in Toronto and is in the new competition at idfa in Amsterdam, the “Green competition”. I will write more about the film later.
