TUE STEEN MÜLLER visited Istanbul just before the Iraq War started. He found an isolated, politically engaged, relatively big documentary community that organizes a festival, a conference and numerous other promotional activities all based on a cultural political vision. A community of activists who prefer to debate the filmmaker’s role in society rather than dwell on new aesthetic developments and production budgets.
LUCINDA BROADBENT participated in Mediamatic’s workshop Non-linear Storytelling for Documentary Makers’ at IDFA November 2002. She shares her experiences in creating an interactive documentary using the «korsakow system».
Two British producers had a strong desire to bring Chinese directors to Europe to present China to Western audiences. They started out with a workshop in Beijing in 1999, which resulted in a four-part series entitled “Interesting Times”, and which is being shown by a number of European broadcasters this spring. The production process demanded close cooperation to make the authentic Chinese voices fit Western TV reality. ULLA JACOBSEN talked to producer Mark Frith, Decameron Films, and director Duan Jinchuan.
A stirring documentary that salutes the formidable role black liberation music played in the long and arduous struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
Balseros (Spanish: Rafters) is a 2002 Catalan documentary co-directed by Carles Bosch and Josep Maria Domènech about Cubans leaving during the Período Especial.
“Frescoes” is like an ideal film should be: a strong visual experience expressed in beautifully crafted pictures and using many facets of the film language as its expression.
Victor Kossakovsky’s “Tishe!” – nominated for the Joris Ivens Award at IDFA 2002 – consists of eighty minutes of film shot from the window of the director’s flat in St. Petersburg. Did somebody mention Hitchcock’s “Rear Window?” Not Kossakovsky. He cannot recall having seen Hitchcock’s film. On the other hand, he acknowledges that “Tishe!” was made against all odds. LARS MOVIN saw the film in Amsterdam and spoke with the director.
During the years 1995-2000, a IDFA Silver Wolf prize was annually awarded to docs made on video, parallel to the Joris Ivens celluloid film competition.
“Imagine a bird in a cage. He has forgotten to fly. When he leaves the cage to learn, he either rebels or becomes a misanthropist, a loner, or he forgets to fly at all,” says a young Iranian to Thierry Michel’s camera.