special industry
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Producers Alexandre Cornu and Christian Popp at the Co-Producers Summit photo: Ruud Jonkers
Forum spotlights co-productions The Forum launched its first ever Co-Producers Summit in collaboration with the European Documentary Network (EDN) on Wednesday. By Melanie Goodfellow
Reaching for the doc stars As she sits at a table in a very crowded Café Jaren, IDFA director Ally Derks is weary but exultant. With three days of screenings still remaining, this year’s festival is on target to rack up sales of 250,000 tickets, up from 235,000 last year. By Goeffrey Macnab
EDN’s head of studies Mikael Opstrup kicked off the event with a rundown of the body’s recently launched EDN Co-production Guide, which he edited. “We launched the guide this summer. It’s available only online on our site and uniquely to EDN members,” explained Opstrup. “The idea is to give a practical hands-on tool to help producers when they are considering embarking on a coproduction.” The extensive study provides information on the co-production stipulations and histories of 30 territories in Europe. Although co-production is commonplace in the fiction feature scene, it is less prevalent in the documentary world.
Heart A rough roundup by Opstrup of the situation in 2013 revealed large disparities in how European nations approach co-production. According to his rough tally, there were 86 co-productions, with combined budgets of €189m, in Europe in 2013. The most proactive co-producing nations were Norway, Sweden Denmark and Ireland, while nations like Spain and Italy were relatively inactive in the field. Pieter Fleury, head of documentary at the Netherlands Film Fund, said co-producing lay at the heart of the body’s strategy for the future and also noted the fund had lowered the local spend criteria for documentaries to qualify for the tax incentive to €100,000.
Trust Other speakers on the panel included Harmen Jalvingh of Amsterdam-based Bonanza Films, German producer Christian Beetz and French producer Alexandre Cornu, whose recent films include Wrestling in Dakar and With Our Eyes. Beetz, executive director of prolific Germany documentary company Gebreuder Beetz, said he loved working on co-productions but that it was important for producers to work with people they knew and trusted. “I love to produce with companies. I am really more into co-production with independent producers than directly making deals with broadcasters because if you go through a co-production partner you get access to the funds in their countries. I’m not talking only about film funds, but also funds related to the topic,” said Beetz. “We’ve never ended up in a mess. Of course you have to find the right partner who you trust. We’re all in the business of trust and if you build up this trust, it’s always one plus one equals three.”
“It’s amazing, amazing,” Derks enthuses of the latest surge in admissions. “I am so proud and we all should be very proud – the whole documentary community – because we were worried if we would hit the target. Since I’ve been doing this festival, every year it grew.”
Organic fit To Derks’ delight, IDFA-goers continue to come in all shapes and sizes. The festival has attracted kids, elderly people, rowdy football fans and music lovers (for docs like Messi and We Are Twisted Fucking Sister!) and refined art lovers keen to see films like Oeke Hoogendijk’s The New Rijksmuseum – The Film or Heddy Honigmann’s festival opener, Around the World in 50 Concerts. The Festival director is happy with IDFA’s new base in De Jaren (“a venue that organically fits IDFA”) and with the extra locations like De Kleine Komedie and old IDFA home De Balie. “The only thing is I wish EYE was a little closer,” she says of the museum in the sleek, modernist building a few miles away on the other side of the River IJ, where several IDFA screenings and events take place.
Female Gaze One of the key strands at IDFA 2014 has been the Female Gaze debate, exploring the position of women in documentary. This year’s IDFA juries have been comprised of mainly women. Derks is heartened that around 50% of the nominations have gone to women. (After all, statistics show that male-dominated juries give more awards to men than women.) Occasionally, debates around the Female Gaze grew fractious. “The discussion the first day at De Brakke Grond, was not the best,” Derks acknowledges. “I think the setting was wrong... and there were some women who had been in the business for a long time who were upset that they didn’t get enough of the mic.” Derks points to the clash between women from the United States (“very tough, very feminist, very strong and ambitious”) and their “less militant” counterparts from Asia, Europe and Africa.
Theatre-driven Historically, documentaries have been reliant on TV for funding. Derks, though, sees this year’s festival as “more theatre-driven that ever before. On the table at The Forum, there is an increasing interest in films for the cinema. Also, the financiers behind the table – there were four or five that really focused on cinematic distribution,” Derks notes. “But, of course, documentary – let’s be honest – you cannot show 300 documentaries throughout the year in the cinema.”
35mm and 16mm
Highlights
The festival will continue to use EYE, especially for hybrid films and docs about cinema (for example, From Caligari To Hitler). “It is, I think, the only venue in Amsterdam right now where we can still show 35mm and 16mm.” In today’s new digital era, Derks admits to a certain nostalgia for the old days of nitrate. “When you think about it, when we started IDFA, we had all these 16mm copies – all these huge boxes that had to be distributed round the different theatres. Life is much easier now.”
Derks is too immersed in this year’s festival to give much thought to IDFA 2015. However, she is mulling over introducing a new section to be called IDFA Classics, themed archival screenings showcasing the best work from festivals gone by. Asked about her own highlights, Derks cites a dinner with George Takei. Not that she was able to spend too much time with the old Star Trek actor. “When he is somewhere, Continues on page 3