IDFA Industry Special 2015-2

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special industry

INCLUDING SCHEDULE

SAT 21 & SUN 22 NOV

#2

For more news & full industry programme, see www.idfa.nl/industry

Crowd Assessment, a social research project on human behaviour involving hoodies and headphones by Amsterdam-based design studio Moniker commissioned by IDFA DocLab & De Brakke Grond bedazzled and beguiled attendees at the opening of DocLab’s Seamless Reality programme on Thursday night. photo: Nichon Glerum

Tip of the iceberg Victor Kossakovsky is shortly to take up residence on top of an iceberg. The maverick Russian documentary maker (at IDFA this year with Kids & Docs entry Varicella) plans to spend “a few months” living on the ice as part of the shooting of his ambitious new feature doc, Aquarela. “I will spend a few months on top of an iceberg drifting from the North Pole to the Equator,” Kossakovsky says. “I am going to be living there.” He will be accompanied on the iceberg by some close friends, Kossakovsky says. Aquarela is being made through Aconite Productions as a co-production with Berlin-based ma.ja.de, Louverture Films and Danish Documentary Production. It has development support from Creative Scotland, Tribeca Film Institute and Eurimages. A huge production with involvement from Scotland, Germany, Denmark, the USA and Mexico, the film is billed as a doc about water, “the beauty of this essential life-giving element, as well as its shattering power.”

“We don’t have the culture to see documentaries for kids” This is not the only new project Kossakovsky is hatching. He is also planning a “very tough” film for adults about the “new situation” in Russia. The director wouldn’t reveal specific details about the Russian doc (which is yet to be titled), but spoke out against the recent changes in Russian society. “I used to be very far from politics. I never wanted to touch it but now, what is happening is over the limit,” the director comments. “I have to do it.”

By Geoffrey Macnab

Russia, Kossakovsky explains, has been an independent country for 24 years, since the Soviet Union collapsed. “For 24 years, they didn’t find any idea that would consolidate society and [bring] all Russians together; what we are doing and who we are.” Suddenly, after the conflict with Ukraine and the Russian annexation of Crimea, Kossakovsky suggests, the Russian people have found common cause in aggressive patriotism. “90% agreed with what happened,” the director states of the Russian response to the situation in Ukraine. In spite of the new Russian project, Kossakovsky remains critical of many contemporary polemical docs. In recent years, he has been devoting his time to making films for kids. Varicella features two sisters studying at the Boris Elfman Dance Academy in St Petersburg. “What is interesting in documentaries for kids is that, if you read books for kids – Hans Christian Andersen or the Grimm brothers or Pushkin – if you read them by yourself, you probably will not finish them. You will read a couple of pages and say oh, naive, silly, sweet! But if you read the same book with your kid, you will say wow – it is an amazing book… it is the same with films for kids. We don’t have the culture to see documentaries for kids.” Read more at www.idfa.nl/industry/daily

Top TEN

Docs for Sale 1

S onita Rokhsareh Ghaem Maghami

2 Snow Monkey

George Gittoes

3 Thy Father’s Chair Antonio Tibaldi, Alex Lora

4 Holy Cow

Imam Hasanov

5 Guantanamo Child

Patrick Reed, Michelle Shephard

6 Hot Sugar’s Cold World Adam Bhala Lough

7N ext Stop: Utopia

Apostolos Karakasis

8 C hechen

Beata Bubenets

9 A Strange Love Affair with Ego Ester Gould

10 I n California

Charles Redon

As of 4 pm, Friday 20 November

Route to the Oscars On Sunday morning (Nov 22), industry guests will have the chance to find out how to make sure their docs qualify for the Oscars. At an Industry Office event, running 11.30-12.30 and organised in collaboration with EYE International, special IDFA guest Tom Oyer, awards manager at the Academy of Motion Pictures, Arts and Sciences, will explain the qualifying criteria for doc features and shorts. “There is a lot of misinformation out there,” Oyer recently commented. At his IDFA session, he hopes to correct some of the misunderstandings about what doc makers need to do get their films into the running. “A documentary feature does require a theatrical release in the US, in both New York and Los Angeles,” Oyer says. “For the documentary short subject category, there are a couple of different ways films can qualify. They can qualify through a theatrical release in either New York or Los Angeles, but we also have a qualifying festival list. There are a number of juried awards at those festivals – films can qualify through that process.” Oscars have been awarded to documentaries since the early 1940s. What has changed in recent years is the number of feature docs being submitted (there are 124 in contention this year), from all over the world. The doc branch at AMPAS includes directors, producers, editors, cinematographers from the doc world – “a whole community” as Oyer puts it. Some top Dutch doc filmmakers are in the Academy, Heddy Honigmann and Leonard Retel Helmrich among them. “They key thing is that they all have a background and experience in the documentary community.” The Oscar doc winners are voted for by the entire Academy, not just its doc branch. Geoffrey Macnab


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IDFA Industry Special 2015-2 by IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam - Issuu