Open City Documentary Festival - 2022 Report

Overv iew

Open City Documentary Festival creates an open space in London to nurture and champion the art of non-fiction cinema. We aim to challenge and expand the idea of documentary in all its forms. We bring together filmmakers and other practitioners to explore and debate the current landscape of documentary.

The 2022 festival took place in venues across London between 7th-13th September and featured screenings of international non-fiction film, both contemporary and historical, as well as cross media, exhibitions, filmmaker Q&As, panels, workshops and networking events. The 2022 festival was the first to take place fully in person since before the COVID-19 pandemic [the 2021 edition happened in a hybrid format whereas the 2020 festival took place solely online]. Following the death of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, on the second day of the festival, a number of adjustments had to be made in line with the period of national mourning. Social events including the festival party were cancelled but all the screenings and talks were able to go ahead.

The 2022 edition did not feature any awards nor juries – this was part of a series of structural changes that underlined a desire for greater horizontality, without the hierarchies imposed by competitive programmes, considering films independently of criteria such as running time and year of production. This resulted in an increased number of historical works in the 2022 programme, which also included retrospectives of the work of Tsuchimoto Noriaki, Betzy Bromberg and Alexandra Cuesta.

Spon sors & Partners

Venues

In 2022, the festival returned to its traditional venues in central London – Bertha DocHouse, Curzon Soho and the ICA. In East London the festival also returned to Genesis Cinema and established a new partnership with Close-Up Cinema. A study-day for the Tsuchimoto Noriaki retrospective was held at Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image. In Focus: Betzy Bromberg was presented in collaboration with Tate Modern, where two of the screenings took place whilst LUX in Highgate hosted the exhibition The Revolution Will Not Be Air-conditioned, which opened Sunday 4th September and ran until Saturday 15th October.

The Festival Hub was back at the China Exchange, with three floors of festival activity in the heart of Chinatown. It housed the Welcome Desk, Expanded Realities Exhibition, Talks & Workshops event spaces as well as a café bar for social events such as our daily Happy Hours.

Programme

This year’s festival consisted of documentary storytelling and artists’ moving image from around the world. The programme comprised 93 new and retrospective non-fiction films including new works by UK filmmakers

Maeve Brennan, Tom Chick, James Edmonds, Onyeka

Igwe, Sasha Litvintseva & Beny Wagner, Morgan

Quaintance, Ben Rivers, Rosalind Nashashibi, Marcy

Saude, Rhea Storr and Hope Strickland. Rarely screened historical works were shown from filmmakers Tsuchimoto

Noriaki, Betzy Bromberg, Helga Reidemeister, Med Hondo, Djouhra Abouda & Alain Bonammy, William Greaves, Peter Hutton, Leandro Katz, Chick Strand, amongst others.

In audience feedback, 88% of attendees rated the film screenings they attended as a 4 or 5 out of 5.

74% of audiences attended the festival because they wanted to see new films.

In Focus: Alexandra Cuesta

The 2022 festival celebrated the work of women filmmakers with two “In Focus” programmes, both were the first in-depth surveys of the artists’ work in the UK. “In Focus: Alexandra Cuesta” consisted of three screenings, bringing together all of her completed films with films by others selected by Cuesta, with an emphasis on recent productions by Ecuadorian filmmakers and artists. The programme included the European premiere of her most recent work Lungta (2022) and was made possible by a grant from the Instituto de Fomento a la Creatividad y la Innovación (Gobierno de la República de Ecuador). Alexandra Cuesta was present for each screening and also gave a Masterclass in which she spoke about her process and practice in documentary filmmaking. Above all, Cuesta’s filmography celebrates the joy of creating. Throughout her retrospective, the filmmaker repeated the phrase “we learn by making,” a concept that acknowledges the way spontaneity and intersubjectivity can guide the creation of a film.

(Andrew Northrop, Senses of Cinema)

In Focus: Betzy Bromberg

The festival co-presented “In Focus: Betzy Bromberg” with Tate Modern, in collaboration with LUX who distribute Bromberg’s films and the support of a Jonathan Ruffer Curatorial Grant from the Art Fund. Spanning five decades of filmmaking by the American avant-garde filmmaker, the programme was curated by Charlotte Procter (LUX), with Valentine Umanksy and Carly Whitefield (Tate Film). Betzy Bromberg was present for all of the screenings in the programme, at both Tate Modern and Close-Up Cinema.

A retrospective of the American avant-garde filmmaker Betzy Bromberg has been a long time coming and this did not disappoint. I particularly enjoyed the rare opportunity to slip into her long-form, later abstract work like A Darkness Swallowed (2005) and Voluptuous Sleep (2011) and having the darkened space of the cinema to contemplate the strange sounds and forms before me.

(Sophia Satchell-Baeza, ALT/KINO)

Tsuchimoto Noriaki: Film is a Work of

Living Beings

Organised by Open City Documentary Festival, the retrospective programme “Tsuchimoto Noriaki: Film is a work of living beings” took place throughout September in various venues across London (ICA, Birkbeck Cinema and Close-Up Cinema), with a series of central screenings coinciding with the festival dates. The retrospective included several of Tsuchimoto’s early films from the 1960s, which chronicle an increasingly modern Japan and changing Asia, and the main trilogy of films made between 1971 and 1975 with the patients of Minamata disease, as well as several other films on the subject. It also included some of his early PR films, and the important works he made about student activism and struggles or about the threat brought to small communities by the forces of “progress” and the uses of nuclear power. Curated by Ricardo Matos Cabo, the screenings were also accompanied by a study-day at Birkbeck, University of London, with speakers including Ishizaka Kenji, Julian Ross, Marcos Pablo Centeno, Irene González, Aaron Gerow, Christine Marran, Jelena Stojkovic and Ricardo Matos Cabo.

The London screenings were followed by the first-ever US retrospective of Tsuchimoto Noriaki’s work, organised by Max Carpenter for the Museum of the Moving Image in New York.

Prog ra mme Highlights — Opening & Closing Night

The festival opened at Curzon Soho with the UK premiere of É Noite na América (It is Night in America) with the filmmaker Ana Vaz joining via Zoom after the screening.

The festival closed at the ICA with screening from the Tsuchimoto retrospective programme The Shiranui Sea.

Closing Night

Opening Night

Student Programme

In 2022 we ran, for the first time, a daily programme of free screenings and in-depth conversations with festival filmmakers, hosted by tutors from the Documentary & Ethnographic Film MA (UCL) at Close-Up Cinema. We received over 60 applications to take part in the programme, primarily from students in postgraduate film programmes in London. Speakers included: Diego Acosta, Richard Alwyn, Teresa A Braggs, Maeve Brennan, Dieter Deswarte, Ryan Ermacora, Ellen Evans, Che-Yu Hsu, Lasse Johansson, Jessica Johnson, Niki Kohandel, Sasha Litvsintseva, Jumana Manna, Jonathan Perel and Beny Wagner.

All the participants in the Student Programme also received a complimentary Talks & Workshop pass giving them access to the Talks Programme in the Festival Hub.

Based at the UCL Anthropology’s Section for Public Anthropology, Open City Documentary Festival is embedded in the UCL community, working closely with colleagues across various departments.

UCL Showcase

We presented a selection of recent films produced by students on Ethnographic and Documentary Film (Practical) MA and Creative Documentary by Practice MFA at UCL Anthropology. Two screening programmes –consisting of 11 works – showed the ambition and broad scope of expression demonstrated by the students, who revealed themselves to be strong and dynamic new voices in non-fiction. The majority of the filmmakers were present for a post-screening Q&A hosted by Laurence Avis, who curated the 2022 UCL Showcase.

Talks & Workshops

The 2022 Talks & Workshops programme featured 17 events, many developed and presented in collaboration with organisations such as LUX, Matchbox Cineclub, Birds’ Eye View, Doc Society and Film in Mind. Highlights included a keynote talk by Dr. Steve Presence and the Ian White Lecture 2022 with Moyra Davey. Across the programme, over 60 speakers – including featured filmmakers such as Alexandra Cuesta, Robert Beavers, Jonathan Perel, Ruth Beckermann, Tiffany Sia, Teresa A. Braggs, Morgan Quaintance and Elisabeth Subrin – shared their insights and experience.

The “Counter-Archives” series of discussions and presentations proposed expansive ways of thinking about the “archive”, considering not just the films themselves but also questions of labour, reparation, and imagination. This included sessions across the week with Annabelle Aventurin & Léa Morin (Non-Aligned Archives), George Clark & An Viêt Foundation, the Cinenova Working Group, Pablo La Parra, the Sam the Wheels project, Tiffany Sia, the Temenos Archive, and Bo Wang, amongst others.

Loved the speakers and how sensitively, thoughtful, articulate and fresh their ideas and content was. Lot of food for thought.

(Audience member, Speaking Nearby: Playing the Archive)

For the second year running, the Critics Workshop developed with the Another Gaze editorial team offered an intensive introduction to the ethics and methodologies of feminist and militant film criticism for 11 selected participants. Hosted by Daniella Shreir, guest speakers included Missouri Williams, Georgie Carr, Laura Staab, Morgan Quaintance, Elena Gorfinkel, Alice Spawls, Rebecca Liu, Simran Hans, and Caitlín Doherty.

Expanded Realities

6 Days

10 Works 11 Countries

Our Expanded Realities Programme was presented as an exhibition within our Festival Hub that was free and open to the public. The exhibition celebrated cross media (AR/ VR/XR) storytelling at the intersection of art and technology. The works came from 11 countries including Australia, Brazil, France, Iran, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, South Africa, South Korea and the USA.

A number of Expanded Realities artists joined Emma Cooper from Innovate UK KTN for an in-person panel discussion around their projects and the ethics and accessibility issues that arise when creating with frontier technologies.

Guests

The removal of all remaining Covid-19 travel restrictions in the UK allowed us to welcome 101 visiting filmmakers, panellists and contributors to this year’s edition. Filmmakers and Expanded Realities artists travelled to London from India, Canada, South Africa, Australia, the United States, Japan, Argentina, Chile, Ecuador and numerous European countries. 74% of screenings had a filmmaker present for the Q&A.

Where guests were unable to travel, we invited them to participate remotely in either a live or pre-recorded capacity.

We were also able to support the travel & accommodation of several international participants from Norway, Belgium and the United States to our Critics Workshop in partnership with Another Gaze, thanks to a microgrant from the International Documentary Association.

This was truly one of the best moments I’ve had showing my work and I am full of gratitude to you for making it happen.

(Alexandra Cuesta)

Thank you for an incredibly smart, generous, creative and warm festival. The programming was exceptional, the vibe was great, and so nice to see old friends (& former students!) and meet new ones.

(Elisabeth Subrin)

Thanks once again for inviting me to contribute to Open City. I really enjoyed the festival very much, and the energy and spirit of the team was really special. The program was exceptional.

(Shai Heredia)

We had the best time at Open City, you guys made us feel very welcome. It was a precious opportunity to share our work and meet other creators.

(Lui Avallos)

What an exceptional and memorable festival experience. THANK YOU all! I hope to have the chance to return again. The programming is so thoughtful and provoking and the staff and festival team were so helpful and wonderful all around.

(Margaret Rorison)

I would like to thank you and your festival team too, because being able to attend the screening was an absolute delight. It was incredibly well organised and the team at the venue were wonderful. It was great to be part of it and I am very grateful to all of you for including my work in the programme and for supporting me in this way.

(Judith Noble)

2022 Festival Team

Sponsors & Part ners

In 2022, we worked with a number of cultural partners to support the festival through marketing efforts and in bringing international filmmakers and speakers to the UK. These included the British Council, Acción Cultural Española, Austrian Cultural Forum London, Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation, Ecuadorian Ministry of Culture and Heritage, Goethe Institut London, Institut français du Royaume-Uni, Japan Foundation, Mosaic Rooms, Instituto Cervantes and the General Representation of Flanders in the United Kingdom.

In-kind sponsors included Bodega Bay and Brixton Brewery, who once again provided drinks at our daily Happy Hours, and Well & Truly, who provided snacks which were included in the festival tote bags for speakers, guests and student delegates.

Audience

Over 5600 people attended the 2022 festival. 59% were attending Open City Documentary Festival for the first time.

47% of audience members intended to attend between 2–5 events at the festival.

53% of audience members at screenings work in the Film industry and the second largest industry represented was Education (17%).

18% in full-time education, 9% in part-time education.

79% of audience members currently live in London with 10% coming from the UK outside London and the remaining 9% travelling internationally to attend.

Beautiful screenings, amazing staffextraordinarily kind, caring and attentive. This is an impressive festival.

(Audience Member)

Wish I could see all of the films! Well done!

(Audience Member)

The 2022 edition of the festival received press coverage from outlets such as Hyperallergic, Sight & Sound, Modern Times Review, Senses of Cinema, Capital Celluloid, Film Carnage, MUBI Notebook, Art Monthly, Dime, Aesthetica, Cineaste Magazine, Film Comment, Business Doc Europe, Londonist, Time Out and Realscreen.

It Is Night in America is an expiring ‘camerabody’, its pulse moves in and out of focus, in and out of light. I would like to say it offers hope of a re-attunement of human and nonhuman natures, but I can’t get the yawning darkness glimpsed at the tail end of the cascade’s relentless plunge out of my mind. It was screened at Open City Documentary Festival at Curzon Soho on 7 September 2022.

(Maria Walsh, Art Monthly)

[On Betzy Bromberg] The recent retrospective of her work at this year’s Open City Documentary Festival in London was the first in-depth study in the UK of her five decades of filmmaking, which has veered over the course of her career from the personal to the transcendental.

(Caitlin Quinlan, MUBI Notebook) London’s Open City Documentary Festival is back. The event nurtures and champions filmmakers working in non-fiction cinema, and this year’s programme features an eclectic and illuminating line up of projects.

(Aesthetica)

[On Tsuchimoto Noriaki] The documentarian’s powerful films about the brutal effects of modernisation in Japan are marked by a desire to make films with and not about vulnerable people.

(Becca Voelcker, Sight & Sound)

The festival’s great glory is its series of comprehensive retrospectives dedicated to filmmakers of different generations from different parts of the world, with works screened where possible in original formats (a sad rarity these years). […] If the festival celebrated only old filmmakers, it could be accused of nostalgia or worse. Its celebration of past excellence, however, is designed to generate a continuum within which emergent talent can situate itself. Two new films from South America stood out from a strong program: opening-night screening It Is Night in America by Brazilian Ana Vaz, and Camouflage by Argentine Jonathan Perel.

(Darragh O’Donoghue, Cineaste Magazine)

Outreach Highlights

Marketing & Audience Development

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Facebook: 13.8k

Newsletter: 5.5k

Combined Following: 44.8k

Monthly average impressions:

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Website Traffic:

Average monthly pageviews: 53k

Average unique monthly visitors: 10k

2023 Festival

The 2023 edition of Open City Documentary Festival will take place between 6th-12th September at venues across London.

If you would like to get involved, please contact the festival team:

María Palacios Cruz – Festival Director maria@opencitylondon.com

Oliver Wright – Director of Programming oliver@opencitylondon.com

Lucy Wardley – Festival Producer lucy@opencitylondon.com

Laverne Caprice – Festival Marketing Manager laverne@opencitylondon.com

opencitylondon.com

@opencitydocs