WHO ARE WE? Docudays UA is the only international human rights documentary film festival in Ukraine. The festival is non-political and non-commercial. Since 2006 Docudays UA has been part of the Human Rights Film Network (HRFN).
INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS DOCUMENTARY FILM FESTIVAL DOCUDAYS UA MORE THAN JUST A FESTIVAL! 24—31 MARCH, 2017 KYIV
The organizers of the festival are the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, Pivden Non-Governmental Organization, Kherson Regional Charity and Health Foundation (KRCHF) and Centre for Modern Information Technologies and Visual Arts. The festival has gathered a huge team of like-minded people – documentary filmmakers, human rights activists, civil rights activists and art managers. Structurally the festival consists of the Organizing Committee, the Selection Committee and executive departments. Also, hundreds of volunteers participate in the festival projects.
WHAT DO WE WANT? The mission of the festival is to create opportunities for every person in Ukraine to watch the most talented and relevant films from all over the world, so as to facilitate the development of critical thinking, formation of active citizenship and treatment of human dignity as the core value. Accomplishing our mission, we contribute to the popularity and development of documentary cinema and raise the standards of upholding human rights in Ukraine.
WHO IS THE FESTIVAL FOR? In March 2016, the festival in Kyiv was attended by 26,843 viewers and participants, with students and socially active youth making over 70%. After holding the Docudays UA in March, the festival team organizes non-commercial screenings in Kyiv universities, art galleries and cultural and educational centres. Also, the documentary films are screened at the venues of the partner festivals all over Ukraine. In the autumn the Docudays UA Travelling Human Rights Documentary Film Festival starts in 23 regions and the Autonomous Republic of Crimea. In 2015, it was attended by 108,000 people. Specially for our viewers, we widely advertise all the events from the life of the community of Ukrainian documentary filmmakers on the official website: docudays.org.ua
THE FESTIVAL PROGRAMME AND GUESTS
WWW.DOCUDAYS.ORG.UA
For the past years the festival has been visited by such famous documentary filmmakers and experts, as Tue Steen Müller and Jon Bang Carlsen from Denmark, Hubert Sauper and Manon Loizeau from France, Michael Glawogger from Austria, Vitaly Mansky and Marina Razbezhkina from Russia, Marcel Łoziński, Jacek Bławut and Marcin Koszałka from Poland, Miroslav Janek from the Czech Republic and, of course, well-known Ukrainian documentary filmmakers, such as Sergey Bukovsky and Oleksandr Balahura.
In 2016 the film festival program consisted of 96 films from 41 different countries. The screenings took programme place in 3 cinemas. During 6 days the festival was attended by 60 invited guests from abroad and 140 from Ukraine. Traditionally, the main festival venue is the Cinema House, an icon building in the city and an example of constructivist architecture of the 1970s. After screenings, extended discussions took place, moderated by professional journalists, human rights experts and civil activists. The film screenings are accompanied by renowned masters’ photography exhibitions, dedicated to the most relevant problems of the modern world. The festival programme consists of competition and out-of-competition screenings, theme-based human rights and educational events.
COMPETITION PROGRAMME DOCU/LIFE Feature-length documentaries in the genre of creative non-fiction. DOCU/RIGHT Feature-length documentaries, highlighting the struggle for fundamental rights and freedoms. DOCU/SHORT Documentary films of no more than 45 minutes of running time. DOCU/UKRAINE Documentaries of any duration, created in Ukraine, or co-produced with Ukraine.
OUT-OF-COMPETITION PROGRAMME Presentation of the most prominent international film festivals, retrospective screenings of well-known directors, special events, theme-based programmes, related to the main theme of Docudays UA.
HUMAN RIGHTS PROGRAMME The festival is an important venue for human rights and human rights education events. Ukrainian and international human rights organizations hold presentations, round-tables, workshops, seminars and inspiring campaigns. This year the human rights program of the festival covered approximately 30 diverse events, targeting both the human rights activists’ community and the general audience. In particular, at the closing ceremony of the festival, 670 people took part in the mass flashmob in support of Oleh Sentsov, Ukrainian film director imprisoned in Russia.
DOCUDAYS UA TRAVELLING DOCUMENTARY HUMAN RIGHTS FILM FESTIVAL
Annually, from October until the end of December Docudays UA holds screenings in the regions: in the cinemas, palaces of culture, higher education institutions, schools, youth clubs, bookstores, libraries, prisons and remand centers, in the educational establishments for the future workers of the penitentiary system. The organizers are the network of 51 NGOs (Docudays UA’s regional partners). The website of the project: traveling.docudays.org.ua
DOCU/CLUB
The network of ongoing media education and human rights Docudays UA film societies in schools, universities, NGOs, euroclubs, libraries, correctional facilities and educational establishments of the penitentiary system all over the country. The main goal is to facilitate formation of active citizenship and legal awareness of high school and university students, and Ukrainian youth by means of providing human rights activists, teachers, civil leaders and penitentiary system workers the media tools and methodology for building dialogue and raising the level of consciousness in the area of human rights. So far, 190 film societies have been created. The website of the project: docuclub.docudays.org.ua
DOCU/SPACE
OUR PROJECTS LIVING LIBRARY
Held annually since 2012. The goal is to fight against stereotypes and prejudices that dominate the society regarding certain groups of people. Usually these groups include members of ethnic and religious minorities, LGBT-community, certain professional groups, and also the people about whose lifestyle the general public knows very little (for instance, refugees), or those people who in some way interact with different minorities (for example, feminists, human rights activists).
DOCU/CLASS
Since 2012 Docudays UA has been inviting prominent film directors, producers, film critics, photographers from differents parts of the world, who prepare original master classes, lectures or presentations. The programme aims at creating the space where young Ukrainian documentary filmmakers could gain their first professional experience.
This is the first online cinema in Ukraine which shows documentaries about human rights. All the films have been shot in Ukraine and about Ukrainians by efforts of different NGOs in cooperation with Docudays UA. The characters are ordinary citizens who are trying to improve the life in their country. In our online cinema you can watch such documentary cycles as “New Heroes”, “Roma Dream”, "The Maidan encyclopaedia" about civic initiatives and self-organiztion, and “You See, My Brother?”, a documentary about Alexander Glyadyelov and his photography exhibition. New films are constantly added to the collection of the online cinema. The website of the project: docuspace.org
DOCU/HIT
We screen the most popular films of the March Docudays UA in Ukrainian cinemas so as to popularize documentary cinema among the general audience, nurturing critical thinking, good taste and understanding the value of documentary films for building the rule-of-law Ukrainian state. This year screenings are taking place in Kyiv, Kharkiv, Lviv, Dnipro, Mariupol, Odesa and Kherson. In the future DOCU/HIT will have a full-scale distribution system. The website of the project: docuhit.org
DOCU/PRO
It is an industrial platform of the festival aimed at the development of the local film industry, forging relationships with foreign documentary cinema experts and launching Ukrainian projects. The first two projects are being realized with the support of the British Council. In 2015-16 the documentary film project competition “The Guardian goes Ukraine” was held in cooperation with The Guardian. In 2016, in partnership with the Sheffield-based festival Doc/Fest the programme DocWorks UA/UK has been launched. The goal is to support talented beginner documentary filmmakers from Ukraine and Great Britain at the stage of developing their film scripts. For more detail: docudays.org.ua/docworks
SEE UKRAINE: DOCUDAYS UA ON TOUR
A cultural diplomacy project. Docudays UA tour around Europe implies screenings of documentary films and organizing photography exhibitions about Ukraine, meetings with filmmakers, as well as public discussions involving civil and human rights activists, publicists, who can help clarify the situations, highlighted in the films, and who can provide more detailed information about the events in Ukraine. From March to June, 2016 the project toured France, Greece and Italy, next in line are Germany and Spain. The website of the project: seeukraine.org
CATALOGUE OF THE UKRAINIAN DOCUMENTARY FILMS
An annual edition in English, published by the Docudays UA team with support of the Ukrainian State Film Agency and the Swedish Embassy. Throughout the year the catalogue is distributed in specialized international film markets. The main purpose is popularization of the Ukrainian documentaries in the world and support of the local filmmaking community in search of financial support/coproducers/distributors. The catalogue includes information about completed films and works-in-progress, contacts of Ukrainian and independent producers, film and TV studios, festivals and distributors. For more detail: docudays.org.ua/2016/news/kino/catalogdocumentary-2016
WITH THE SUPPORT OF
DOCU/BLOG
The first and the only Ukrainian blog, dedicated to documentary filmmaking. The authors of the blog is our Docudays UA team that writes about significant cinema events and prominent directors, post reports from film festivals, analyze the role of Ukraine in the world cinema context, share interviews with Ukrainian and foreign documentary filmmakers. For more detail: docudays.org.ua
MEDIA PARTNERS
ORGANIZERS
PARTNERS