TALKING IT UP The flagship event of this year’s 25th Festival is tomorrow’s (Thursday’s) “First IDFA Congress” which promises to be a talking shop on the very grandest scale. Illustrious keynote speakers, panels, clips and plenty of surprise elements are all being thrown into the mix, Geoffrey Macnab reports.
Rwandan women featured in Lisa and Rob Fruchtman’s inspirational doc Sweet Dreams show off their drumming skills after the premiere in de Brakke Grond on Monday. Photo: Felix Kalkman
MAKING PROGRESS
The Forum launches its first ever Work in Progress section on Wednesday, with rough-cut extracts of Lucy Walker’s untitled snowboarding documentary, Nancy Kates’ Regarding Susan Sontag and Yoruba Richen’s ITVS and Sundance Institute-backed The New Blacks among the works set to screen, Melanie Goodfellow reports. Walker’s film, about the tragic accidents of champion snowboarder Kevin Pearce and the late free-skier Sarah Burke on the same superpipe jumping ramp in Park City, Utah, is looking for another €179,000 in finance to complete its €750,000 budget. Slated for January 2013, the HBO-backed documentary produced by Walker and Julien Cautherley under the LA-based Kevin Rides Again banner is a strong contender for a Sundance slot. Roundtable pitches will also continue in the morning with the final projects including Claudia Lisboa’s Back to the Square, the tale of a young woman fighting tradition in post-revolutionary Egypt, and Academy Award nominee James Spione’s Silenced about three CIA whistleblowers. Spione’s Incident in New Baghdad was nominated for an Oscar in the Short Documentary category in 2012.
CONVERSATION STARTER Looking back at the first two days of the Forum, industry chief Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen says: “It might not reflect the general mood in the market, but there has been a great atmosphere and some really good energy. People seemed to appreciate the great variety of projects and styles on offer here and the central pitches have been pretty lively with people really contributing and giving their thoughts. Of course there is less money around and it’s getting harder and harder to finance documentaries, which means producers are taking
DOCS FOR SALE TOP 10 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
Wrong Time Wrong Place ............................... 63 Black Out ........................................................ 58 Miss Nikki and the Tiger Girls ........................ 51 I Am Breathing................................................ 44 Bad Boy High Security Cell ............................. 37 Camera/Woman .............................................. 36 Sexy Baby ........................................................ 36 Bravehearts ...................................................... 34 Fallen City....................................................... 34 Poor Us – An Animated History of Poverty ..... 34
longer and longer to put projects together, but I think the Forum still helps make this happen in the long run by getting the conversation started”, she continues.
INTO THE DESERT Popular Central Pitches on Monday and Tuesday included Journey Story, Embracing the Dead, Cooper’s Challenge, The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka and Nanna Frank Moller’s Embracing the Dead, revolving around a Danish forensic expert who is called in to examine the bodies of Iraqis who were allegedly tortured while in the care of Danish soldiers. “This is definitely of interest to us”, says Nick Fraser of BBC Storyville. “It’s a great dense, psychological film turning the ordinary CSI film on its head.” “We have a president who says he wants to look forward not back and it’s interesting to see another country which was involved in some of these adventures abroad looking critically at its role through a very specific case”, says Simon Kilmurry, head of POV (point of view), the PBS documentary strand. Israeli Keren Shayo’s Journey Story, produced by Tel Aviv-based Osnat Trabelsi, also prompted a positive response. The film will seek to expose Bedouin-run smuggler transit camps in the heart of the Sinai Desert, where torture and murder are rife, through the disappearance of a 20-year Eritrean immigrant en route to Israel. Aside from financial backing from broadcasters, the production is also seeking an international crew to the camps in Sinai. “We have the permission to film and the access but as Israelis, and particularly at the moment, we cannot go into the Sinai”, Trabelsi explains.
PACKED OUT Van Nieuwenhuijzen also noted that the two roundtable sessions dedicated to Art and Culture and Crossmedia had been well-attended this year. Popular projects at the “packed out” crossmedia presentations included the ambitious 24 Hour Jerusalem Online multiscreen programme, re-uniting the producers of Gaza/Sderot and Game Plan, a quirky interactive doc in which the Finnish directors attempt to build a digital game with the help of Peter Vesterbacka of Helsinki-based Rovio Entertainment (creators of the billion download Angry Birds app).
“As with all things IDFA, it was Ally’s idea”, event coordinator Peter Wintonick says of the part festival director Ally Derks played in hatching the grand event (being held at the Compagnietheater). One of the event’s earliest supporters was the Dutch Cultural Media Fund, whose own travails have been the subject of heated debate throughout the festival (the Fund is threatened with closure by 2017). Given the agonizing that has been going on all week over the financing of Dutch docs in an increasingly hostile climate, the title of the Congress – Dutch Docs Conquer The World! – risks having an ironic undertow. Nonetheless, the tone at the Congress is expected to be defiant and celebratory of the strengths of the sector. “We are trying to not to talk about financing, but to bring the debate to other levels, about how smaller filmmaking nations – and the Dutch in particular – can optimize their presence in the international marketplace,” says Wintonick. The Congress promises to be a Janus-faced event, at the same time looking inward at the Dutch experience and outward at the international doc arena. BBC Storyville mandarin Nick Fraser will be giving a keynote speech on “Why Documentaries Matter.” (A subject he has previously tackled in typically lively fashion in a treatise he wrote for the Reuters Institute for the Study Of Journalism.) The IDFA Congress will also feature famous Dutch stand-up comedian Jan Jaap van der Wal. The late withdrawal of German director Tom Tykwer (reportedly suffering from a bout of pneumonia after a gruelling publicity tour for his magnum opus Cloud Atlas) has left a gap in the line-up. At the time of writing, his replacement hadn’t yet been confirmed. However, there are still plenty of opinionated and colourful speakers ready to hold forth. Among them, Karolina Lidin will be discussing the Scandinavian model for doc funding. (The Danes in particular are widely envied for their dynamic and transparent system.) Advertising guru Erik Kessels of KesselsKramer will be talking about branding and marketing. The day will be co-moderated by Jess Search, Executive Director of Britdoc. The talks and debates are all being recorded and will be posted in one form or another online. So, do Dutch docs have a future? The answer, the Congress is likely to conclude, is a resounding ‘Yes!’
AUDIENCE AWARD TOP 10 (AS ON 20/11/2012) 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.
In The Shadow Of The Sun............................ 9,4 Searching for Sugar Man ................................ 9,2 Bravehearts ..................................................... 9,0 The Sound of Belgium ................................... 9,0 Little World.................................................... 8,9 Rafea: Solar Mama ......................................... 8,9 I Am Breathing............................................... 8,9 Open Heart .................................................... 8,8 The Other Dream Team ................................. 8,7 Gulabi Gang................................................... 8,7 IDFA – 1