calendario eventi  :: 

X

24/7/2007

BritDoc '07

Keble College, Oxford

"A wonderful experience, I look forward to attending again next year." Nancy Abraham, Vice President of original programming, documentaries, HBO
“BRITDOC is fast becoming the launch pad for a new generation of British filmmakers,” James Flint Telegraph Online, Arts Editor
“BRITDOC blew my mind” Mike Bonanno, The Yes Men, winner of the Best Pitch Prize After a smash hit first year, BRITDOC ‘07 – the energetic festival for documentary film- returns to Keble College, Oxford this July. For three days BRITDOC will bring together the most important and interesting filmmakers and financiers, broadcasters and distributors from the UK and beyond help make, buy and sell, great documentary films.

BRITDOC ’07 will feature everything from the documentary dragon’s den in the annual Pitching Forum; to BRITDOC’s take on the speed dating craze with Would Like To Meet; with talks from internationally acclaimed directors such as Larry Charles (Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Borat). In the jam-packed screening programme handpicked to showcase the best in documentary filmmaking from this year running alongside; BRITDOC will demonstrate why British documentary filmmakers are probably the best in the world.

BRITDOC’s special theme this year is Documentary meets Art. Why? Because documentary filmmakers have much to share with and learn from artists. At a time when the commercialisation of television has limited the approaches filmmakers can experiment with, independent artists such as Douglas Gordon, Phil Collins and Gillian Wearing have been making free with documentary ideas and providing a pointed critiques of television’s documentary culture. The festival will be screening short films by artists, and inviting artists such as Gillian Wearing and Jeremy Deller to join our juries and debate their work. Additionally, BRITDOC will host a stunning photographic exhibition courtesy of the Magnum Agency.

BRITDOC is inspired by a simple idea- documentaries matter. They help us to reflect on the way we live and challenge our ideas, assumptions and fears. They can be funny, sad, twisted, weird and beautiful, but they are all designed to make us feel something. The last few years have seen a surge in the popularity of documentaries and a growing number of documentary feature films making it into cinemas. BRITDOC aims to bring those world-class filmmakers together to facilitate international co-productions, generate ideas and share knowledge with the overall aim of stimulating the documentary market in the UK and help filmmakers find funding and market their work. At the first festival in 2006 more than 650 delegates came together for screenings, masterclasses, panels, pitching opportunities and networking events. Over £400,000 was invested in documentaries pitched at the forum. Films in competition were picked up by other major international festivals, sales agents and international broadcasters. Successes include British Competition winner Ben Hopkin’s 37 Uses For a Dead Sheep which went on to be nominated for the European Film Prix Arte for Documentary Film.

During the three days of BRITDOC 07 audiences will have the opportunity to watch the very best feature length documentaries completed in the last twelve months. “The film programme aims to celebrate the diversity in both form and content of feature documentaries,” comments Maxyne Franklin, film programmer of BRITDOC ’07. “We will be screening a mixture of powerful and galvanising films that shed light on key issues of our time, films which capture the essence of the human spirit and films to make you smile.”

All are UK premieres and all in competition for the UK and international prizes. Films confirmed the achingly beautiful Kurt Cobain: About A Son by AJ Schack, The Living Goddess from the producers of Rise and award winning The Monastery by Pernille Rose Gronkjaer. BRITDOC will also screen the heart stopping We Are Together, a first time feature from British director Paul Taylor which recently won the Audience Award at the Tribeca, IDFA and Amnesty Film Festivals.

Events
The Pitching Forum
returns in 2007 as the heart of the co-production market at BRITDOC, bringing together the top international commissioning editors and foundations including HBO, NHK, the Sundance Institute, ITVS, Discovery Studio, Arte, all intent on funding British documentary talent. It’s a gladiatorial spectacle as a dozen of the best British producers pitch their ideas in front of an audience of 300 spectators. Fourteen international commissioners, and four-hundred spectators, will listen as filmmakers pitch their next project. Last years Pitching Forum saw projects scoop over £500,000 of funding. Delegates will also have the opportunity to hear from star speakers at events including the More4 Interview with LA director Larry Charles.

Would Like To Meet…
The place where new documentaries are born, Would Like To Meet is an opportunity for filmmakers to engage with a range of experts and fast-track into new subject areas. This year Would Like to Meet introduces “The Campaigners” hosted by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust who are working on the frontline campaigning for social justice in health, education, human rights and democracy. They will be joined by “The Innovators” hosted by the Royal Academy of Engineering. From nano-technology to artificial intelligence and climate change, filmmakers are given the opportunity to meet the men and women shaping our future.

The Doctors Surgery
Book your personal appointment with an expert in production, finance or distribution and have your documentary dilemmas resolved. Confirmed ‘Doctors’ include leading executive producer John Battsek and Sundance Film Festival Programmer John Cooper.

Magnum Photographic Exhibit
As part of this years theme, Art and Artists in Documentary, Magnum agency will be hosting an exhibit of two photographers: Jonas Bendiksen (Print Room Exhibition) and Trent's Park (Dream/Life and Beyond). “The motivation behind the BRITDOC Festival is to bring all the key players in documentary film production together at the same time, and to create circumstances that will spark ideas that go beyond standard thinking,” comments Lucy Cooke, event programmer for BRITDOC ’07. “We’ve seen events like the pitching forum, and Would Like to Meet inspire some of the most outlandish – and brilliant ideas for documentaries. With our theme of art this year, we’re hoping to harness – and build - on that creative energy even further.”

“BRITDOC ’06 was a resounding success for us – and we’re confident that BRITDOC ’07 will be even better,” comments Beadie Finzi, Festival Director. “The top quality films that we’ve programme, coupled with the events we have planned and the sheer wealth of key people in the documentary film industry in one place should guarantee an explosive week. BRITDOC is all about creating opportunities, and with the inclusion of artists and art as a theme, we’re expecting to see some really incredible things come from it.”

The festival is run by a new and innovative organisation, The Channel 4 British Documentary Film Foundation which gives grants and assistance to British independent filmmakers.

Artists push boundaries of documentary film

In 2006, BRITDOC exploded onto the film festival scene - shaking up the UK documentary film industry, and providing a platform for filmmakers to get noticed by the people that matter. The dynamic environment at BRITDOC saw new creative partnerships evolve, new films commissioned and existing films gain attention and acclaim.
To build on the momentum that BRITDOC 06 began, this year's Festival has introduced a theme - Documentary meets Art. Through a range of screenings, photographic exhibitions, panel discussions, pitching forums and networking events, artists and filmmakers will be encouraged to engage and explore the potential that art as a form and documentary as a medium has to offer.

At a time when the commercialisation of television has limited the approaches filmmakers can experiment with, independent artists have been making free with documentary ideas and the results have the power to provoke, delight, confuse, annoy and inspire the hardened documentary professional. BRITDOC believe that documentary filmmakers have much to share with and learn from artists, which is the reason behind this year’s theme.

Documentary Meets Art Special Archive Screening
DIAL H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, Johan Grimonprez
DIAL H-I-S-T-O-R-Y is the acclaimed hijacking documentary that eerily foreshadowed 9-11. We meet the romantic skyjackers who fought their revolutions and won airtime on the passenger planes of the 1960's and 1970Õs. By the 1990's, such characters were apparently no more, replaced on our TV screens by stories of anonymous bombs in suitcases. Director Johan Grimonprez investigates the politics behind this change, at the same time unwrapping our own complicity in the urge for ultimate disaster.

Dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y blends photographic, electronic, and digital images, interspersing reportage shots, clips from science fiction films, found footage, and reconstituted scenes filmed by the artist. The soundtrack is constituted of a fictive narrative inspired by two Don DeLillo novels 'White Noise' and 'Mao II' —which, for Grimonprez, "highlight the value of the spectacular in our catastrophe culture."

Documentary Meets Art Shorts Programme

ANYONE ELSE ISN'T YOU, Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard
An unscripted portrait of fourteen people talking to the camera about love and loss, using the compilation cassette as a trigger to spark the subjects into talking candidly. Iain and Jane’s pace of editing jumps between the subjects, mixing meaning and blurring narratives to heighten the oscillations between moments of brash self-confidence and crushing uneasiness.

GOLD, Rachel Davies
Two young Olympic gymnasts dance in their local gym. Set in an everyday London suburb, GOLD delves into a surreal and sensual world. A celebration of energy and elegance of human movement, it evokes the promise of freedom and power of adrenaline of youth.

GIRL CHEWING GUM, John Smith
‘The Girl Chewing Gum’ came about after I saw François Truffaut’s ‘Day for Night’, a film about the making of a film, in 1975. Before then it had never occurred to me that every detail of the action in almost all feature films, even incidental background action in street scenes, is planned and directed.

HUMAN RADIO, Miranda Pennel
People dance in private moments of personal abandon, across London in the summer of 2001. The film is the result of the director’s work with respondents to a local advertisement seeking ‘living-room dancers’ - people who love to dance behind closed doors.

SEA CHANGE, Joe King
Filmed on a caravan park at the end of the season, Sea Change reveals a landscape dramatically transformed by light and time, and resonating with the transience of human presence. The old caravans that fill the site are soon to be removed and crushed to make way for a new housing development, so the film also acts as a kind of document for an unusual place on the brink of disappearance.

Magnum Exhibition

Magnum Photos is a photographic co-operative of great diversity and distinction owned by its photographermembers. The world's most prestigious photographic agency was formed by four photographers - Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David "Chim" Seymour who created Magnum in 1947 to reflect their independent natures as both people and photographers. As part of this year’s BRITDOC theme Magnum agency will be hosting an exhibit of two photographers:

DREAM/LIFE AND BEYOND, Trent Parke
Trent Parke was born and raised in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. Using his mother’s Pentax Spotmatic and the family laundry room as a darkroom, he began taking pictures when he was around 12 years old. Tpday, Parke, the only Australian photographer to be represented by Magnum, has one of the most vivid visual signatures in Australian photojournalism. He has won five ‘Gold Lenses’ from the International Olympic Committee and many other prizes, including World Press Photo Awards in 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2005.

PRINT ROOM EXHIBITION, Jonas Bendiksen
Norwegian Jonas Bendiksen began his career when he, twenty years old, arrived by boat in the Far East Russian port of Vladivostok. He spent the next years based in Russia, working on stories around the outer fringes of the former USSR, resulting in the recently published book “Satellites”. Now based in New York, he travels extensively, often focussing on isolated enclaves and communities.

Installations

8 NATIONAL FLAGS, Icaro Doria
An exhibition by Brazilian designer Icaro Doria. Doria's iconic series began life as a Portuguese advertising campaign for the Grande Reportagem magazine but achieved cult status via an internet viral campaign.

REUNION, Monica Ludlow
A multi-screen installation based on her film Reunion by artist and filmmaker Monica Ludlow. This film tells the story of an extraordinary weekend in a hotel in New York when an extended family reunite after many years.

A BRIEF HISTORY OF TERROR, Scott King
King trained as a graphic designer but now works primarily as an artist. He worked as Art Director of i-D magazine and went on to become Creative Director of Sleazenation. King occasionally produces work under the banner

'CRASH!' with writer and historian Matt Worley. He has exhibited widely in London, New York and European galleries including the ICA, Cubitt, KW Berlin, Portikus and White Columns.

A HOMAGE TO EMPIRE,
A homage to the Andy Warhol documentary Empire. Empire comprises a single shot of the Empire State Building. Filmed on the 25th-26th July 1964 from 8:06 pm to 2:42 am from the offices of the Rockefeller Foundation on the 41st floor of the Time-Life Building, 16 blocks from the Empire State Building.

Panel Discussions

ART AND DOCUMENTARY PANEL
This panel, sponsored by Film London, This panel will bring together leading British artists including Jake Chapman, Kutlug Ataman and Jeremy Deller in discussion with BBC's Alan Yentob. Each artist will be showing clips of and talking about documentaries that have inspired them over the years.

ANIMATION AND DOCUMENTARY PANEL
This session has been curated by Joe King, Head of Animation Department at the Royal College of Art. Five filmmakers (Tim Webb, Jonathan Hodgson, Robb Ellender, Christoph Steger, Sylvie Bringas and Kez Margrie) will screen their animated documentaries and discuss how to work with form in the documentary genre.

Image: Johan Grimonprez

For all press enquiries please contact Paul Woodmansey, Idea Generation : paul@ideageneration.co.uk +44 (0)207 749 6855

stampa

permanent link