As Sunny Side of the Doc was celebrating record-breaking numbers of projects and buyers, five filmmakers from Tehran silently arrived in Marseilles. Somewhere at the fringe of an incredibly bustling documentary market, BEN KEMPAS witnessed how the Iranian directors met their broadcasters for the very first time.
Bjørn Erichsen, Director of Television at the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and former television director for DR (Danish Broadcasting Corporation), finds public service TV in good shape and resilient to the commercial channels.
“Rivers and Tides” (or how to understand the intangible) is a wonderful film about the British sculptor Andy Goldsworthy and his work.
Most people go to the Locarno Festival to watch fiction features, but the programme harbours many documentary gems, too. JERRY WHITE visited the festival this past August.
Danish director Anders Østergaard has always been fascinated by the relationship between an artist and his/her art. Like in his earlier film “The Makers”, he this time delves into the life of the Belgian cartoonist Hergé who created Tintin.
After a big festival success with his film “Vivre après”, paroles de femmes from 2000, Laurent Bécue-Renard decided to make a completely new version of the film “De guerre lasses” and release it in cinemas for a broader audience. It is now finished and will be premiering in cinemas on October 29. Interview by EMMA BAUS.
So far, India has had only one major festival of docs and shorts – the Mumbai International Film Festival, which started as a biannual event in 1990. Starting this spring, however, the southern State of Kerala inaugurated an annual event featuring docs and shorts: the Second International Video Festival, which was held in the capital of Tiruvananthapuram. RADA SESIC was there.
“War” is a quiet film on a violent subject. Danish director Jens Loftager chose not to show a single corpse in his film about the nature of war, because he wanted to avoid cheap devices. The complexity of the subject called for a different visual style. War is the second film of a trilogy, the first of which was “Words from 1995”, and “Faith” will conclude the series. ANETTE OLSEN talked to the director about his aesthetic approach in “War”.
In Austria several public bodies provide film funding for documentaries, giving filmmakers a base on which to deal with Austrian issues, instead of having to please several international co-producers. The filmmakers return the favour by making thoroughly researched documents on complicated historical and contemporary issues in their own country. TUE STEEN MÜLLER saw a selection of the new docs at the Diagonale fest in Graz this past March.