SH E F FIELD D O C F E S T 2 0 1 2 In association with
/ W E L C O M E Sheffield Doc/Fest brings the international
from 20 countries participate in the marketplace.
documentary family together to celebrate the
Millions of pounds of deals are done during the
art and business of documentary making for five
festival.
intense days in June. Sheffield is fast becoming known as one of the top places in the world for
Documentary Campus and Sheffield Doc/Fest are
people from the documentary and digital industries
delighted to announce that we have formed a
to get together - to meet, to screen their work,
partnership and are co-presenting the industry
share knowledge, do business, make new contacts
conference sessions at the 19th Sheffield Doc/
and discuss innovations and challenges they are
Fest. Both organisations have prided themselves
facing in the ever changing media landscape.
for many years on presenting high quality sessions and industry networking opportunities and the
Over the past four years Sheffield Doc/Fest has
partnership seemed like an obvious one to form
massively expanded its marketplace activity, as
- we both aim to help the documentary industry
well as its cross platform, interactive and digital
thrive and stay alive and pooling our resources
programme. These developments and the stunning
has allowed us to put on a fantastic session
film programme and often controversial conference
programme for you all.
sessions are what attract over 2000 delegates from around the globe and thousands of general public.
Along with our partner Crossover we also deliver some of the most innovative and internationally
Sheffield Doc/Fest is famous for its fabulous
acclaimed training initiatives for the film, TV
parties and endless networking opportunities. The
and digital sector throughout the year.
festival programme includes 120 films from dozens
Crossover Labs have been presented in many
of countries, 300 speakers from the digital and
countries around the world. In partnership with
docs sector and over 150 buyers and decision makers
Wide Eye Pictures we deliver the Engine Room Pitch
Workshops through the year around the UK.
of a great documentary: of feeling you are walking through the shrieking metal factories in China
Doc/Fest is very proud to support the development
that manufacture almost everything you own in the
of emerging talent, providing educational and
film 24 City, or trudging through the vast sink-
networking opportunities, outreach training
estates where the British ghettoise the poor in
schemes and a structured internship and volunteer
Sighthill Stories.
programmes all year. The festival itself is a
But the films that riveted me most were the
brilliant forum for new talent to meet established
stories of people embarked on their own epic
filmmakers and producers and buyers. If you work
journeys – from country to city, from exile to
in the documentary film, factual TV or digital
home, from Africa on capsizing boats to the shores
industries you can't afford to miss Sheffield Doc/
of Europe. The most devastating is the film Life
Fest.
After the Fall, which takes us home with an Iraqi exile – then makes us watch as the home is burnt
If you can't afford a ticket to ride around the
down. Kasim Abid fled Saddam's goons in 1974, and
world, there is another way. You can tour the
returned three decades later after the Anglo-
craters of Baghdad, the swelling skylines of China,
American invasion. At first, this is a family
and the mud villages of Senegal from a cinema
reunion film. He embraces the brothers and sisters
seat at the Sheffield International Documentary
he has not seen in so long to find that war and
Festival.
sanctions have "turned their hair grey". They explain how the secret police came looking for
There, over the past week, I have been staring
him, and they were terrified they would pay for
– through celluloid glasses – into the eyes of
his exile. But now they are all filled with "a
people scattered across the earth. Even the best
dreadful sense of hope": Saddam is gone, democracy
print journalists cannot give you the immediacy
beckons.
And then the lights go out, and the petrol runs
briefly, peering from tanks – seem like surreal
dry, and the tanks keep rolling, and the suicide
extras from another movie set, stumbling into the
bombs begin. Kasim and his family stand frozen. "Is
streets of Baghdad by mistake.
this supposed to make Iraqis support them?" Kasim asks, staring on TV at the jigsaw of body parts
Slowly, the pools of hope and optimism curdle. The
after a bombing. His camera stays distant, peering
camera pans across acres of rubble as Kasim says:
at the chaos in long shots, as if paralysed. But
"This is American reconstruction." His nieces –
the optimism takes a long time to die. The house
smart, determined young women – find themselves
a few doors away from his sister is blown up by a
imprisoned in their homes by Islamist militias. "No
mysterious package. His niece is in a car that is
one has the right to force me to cover my head,"
stopped by gunmen, and one of the passengers is
one of them says, in despairing anger, before
shot. Kasim's coffee is blown out of his hand as
adding: "We might as well be dead, so what's the
he sits at home. They don't talk about it much.
point of living?" Through it all, the streets of
They try to continue with normal family life.
Baghdad have a surreal beauty, with their concrete brutalism and dust storms and groaning rubble.
After all the headlines, after all the impossiblesounding statistics – a million dead, four million
The war blasts deeper and deeper into the family's
forced from their homes – we finally see what
life – and then, one day, a gang wearing balaclavas
this war has been like for ordinary Iraqis. You
enters the grocery shop run by Kasim's brother
are driving to work and you get stuck in traffic
Ali. They put a gun to his head as his young son
– and shooting begins all around you. What do
watches, and bundle him into a car. The family
you do? Your child wants to go to school in a
waits – one day, two days, seven days. There is no
country where the sky is scarred black with bomb
ransom demand. They know Ali had long ago converted
smoke. What do you do? The US soldiers – glimpsed
to becoming a Sunni, and all over Baghdad, the
rival religious sects are slaughtering each other.
men and snouts like pigs, are about to pass from
The family squeezes into the overflowing morgue –
history. In most wildlife films, the camera is
and Ali is there. In the chaos, the morgue loses
a god, swirling anywhere the wildlife swirls.
the body. They never get to bury him.
Not here. In Peace With Seals, Novak has made a wildlife film about his inability to find any
Life After the Fall is a heart-breaking film
wildlife. He trawls Europe trying to find the
because it is a heartbroken film. Just before
seals. He tries to lure them with large plastic
she flees her country, Kasim's sister Ilham sits
replicas of female seals, the amphibian equivalent
stunned and says to camera: "After the fall, we
to sex dolls. He interviews elderly seal hunters.
would sit on our balcony and talk about the future
But he only ever gets fleeting glimpses of the
of Iraq. We had high hopes. My husband used to say
creatures themselves – and then the seals are
– Dubai, the Gulf [states] will be nothing compared
gone.
to Iraq... But in the end everything failed. We didn't benefit at all. The country didn't get
The film becomes a meditation on the great
better or rebuilt, it just got destroyed some
ecological die-off we are living through – and
more."
causing. The seals are a seal on our fate, too, he believes. He quotes one of my favourite novels,
The Czech film-maker Miloslav Novak has been on a
Karel Capek's The War With the Newts, where humans
very different journey: to find a creature we are
and amphibians go to war. If this is a war, we
killing. The Mediterranean monk seal is Europe's
have won. Wildlife has lost. And we will pay for
most endangered species. After 14 million years
our victory. The film ends with a hellish image.
dappling in our seas, there are fewer than 500
In the 1950s, a seal was captured in Sardinia and
left in the wild, and none in captivity. These
brought to Rome, where it was made to live in a
odd, wriggling, blubber creatures, with arms like
fountain. Novak imagines the animal flapping in
concrete while photographers burst flashes in its
It's not right. It's not right that they came here
face and a crowd of tourists roared its approval.
from Europe and took everything. What's left for
This is what the world looks like now, on a grand
us?" One of Peter Mandelson's last acts before
scale.
leaving the European Commission was to try to extend Europe's "right" to Africa's fish. The film
The seals are not the only beings dying in the seas
ends with hundreds more desperate young people
around Europe. The film Barcelona or Die opens in
setting off in half-broken boats, to skivvy or to
a tiny village in Senegal whose poverty-starved
drown.
young people dream of sailing to Europe. Every day, tiny, rickety boats stuffed with people set
What do you learn if you watch dozens of movies
off. Some make it to the Canary Islands and on to
from every continent in one concentrated burst
their dream city, Barcelona. But many only reach
in the dark? I kept thinking of Salman Rushdie's
"barca": the afterlife in their language. The few
definition of globalisation: "Everywhere is part
who return tell of how their boats capsized, they
of everywhere else now." These stories about Iraq
watched family members drown and had to drink sea
and the shores of the Mediterranean and Senegal
water.
are stories that lead directly back to us. Next year, see the world at the Sheffield International
And why? Why do they come? The African village
Documentary festival – and you will see your own
is coming to Europe because Europe has come to
actions staring right back at you.
their shores – and destroyed their livelihoods. "There's nothing in the sea any more," explains one fisherman. "There was a time when the sea was good, and there were lots of fish... The [huge, industrial European] trawlers put an end to that.
/ W I T H O U T
C O M P R O M I S E
SHEFFIELD D O C U M E N TA RY FILM F E S T I VA L 2012
W W W . S H E F F D O C F E S T. C O M @SHEFFDOCFEST