Doc/Fest Blog
MeetMarket 2012 opens for entries
By Charlie Phillips 04 January, 2012
It's time - we're very excited...
The call for applications for the 2012 MeetMarket at Sheffield Doc/Fest is now open online for 3 months until Thursday 29th March here. This is your opportunity for pitching new documentary, factual and cross-platform projects to over 200 decision makers, buyers, funders and mentors in one of the world's top factual media marketplaces
MeetMarket is Doc/Fest's pitching initiative offering matchmade meetings between the world's best documentary and digital creators and the top funders and mentors who can support them. Over 2 days, those pitching can expect 15-20 meetings, all based on their requests and needs.
"MeetMarket was fantastic for us. It really gave me faith in our project - we didn’t have one meeting that wasn’t relevant or useful in some way"
"A fantastic way to meet all the people it would normally take a year to set up meetings with"
"Buzzing with excitement and anticipation, with enough space to have privacy and to talk freely. Plus great support from all the team, allowing producers to concentrate on pitching."
Previous MeetMarket Participants
In 2012, we will select approximately 65 projects to pitch, all of whom will have one-to-one meeting with key funders and decision-makers match-made and scheduled. Projects can be at any stage from early development to post-production, and don't need to have financing secured already. Producers can be from anywhere in the world and we welcome international submissions.
Projects can also be in any genre of documentary/factual, from factual entertainment through to art/installation documentaries. We also welcome cross-platform/interactive projects and those projects looking to raise finance and distribute/exhibit their projects through alternative strategies including via crowd funding and third sector. Once again, MeetMarket will feature experts in these areas for you to meet, alongside broadcasters, film funds, sales agents and distributors. The MeetMarket form for 2012 has been updated to allow more space for describing interactive and cross platform elements, outreach strategies and innovative distribution/exhibition plans
For more information on the process of applying for MeetMarket plus useful tips on the process, go here
If you're selected you are offered the opportunity to request meetings with, and pitch to, a high number of decision makers - last year 217 in total, including BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Five, ARTE France, ARTE ZDF, Irish Film Board, RTE, Ford Foundation, VPRO, YouTube, IndieGoGo, Kickstarter, NHK, TRT, Tribeca Film Funds, PBS, Sundance Institute, ETV, DR TV, CBC, Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation, SVT, Sky, Current TV, YLE, TG4, Dogwoof, AVRO, SBS, and many more. They represent creative documentary, science, history, arts, theatrical, online and broadcast distribution, sales agents, interactive media, and more beyond. To see the full list of who attended in 2011 look here - this list will be updated with the 2012 decision makers very soon.
MeetMarket generated millions of pounds in deals done and in negotiation in 2011, with the matchmaking personalised format meaning you can discuss your project creatively in detail. In total, there were over 1300 matchmade meetings in MeetMarket 2011. Now firmly settled in our June slot, MeetMarket will occupy an even more crucial slot in the cycle of the international funding of documentary, factual and cross-platform media.
The application process requires a synopsis, one-minute teaser, headline budget figures, and biographical information on participants. We're delighted that for the first time, teaser uploads will be powered and securely hosted by our partners at Distrify
Submissions for the the 2012 MeetMarket are subject to an administration fee of £20 plus VAT per project.
Submissions close Thursday 29th March 2011 and late applications will not be accepted. For more info on MeetMarket, and to enquire about applying and whether your projects are suitable, contact Doc/Fest's Marketplace Director Charlie Phillips at charlie@sidf.co.uk
Docs of the Year
By Charlie Phillips 03 January, 2012
If you excuse the slight eccentricity of the formatting and selection of sources, then this a cute comparison of different critics and festivals' documentaries of 2011.
Glad to see The Interrupters wins out! Full analysis of it all right here
The Best Documentaries of 2011 from POV.
People To People Conference, South Africa
By Charlie Phillips 14 December, 2011
This report from our friend, Rehad Desai:
"The People to People Documentary (P2P) Conference 2011 was a considerable success for an event only in its 3rd edition. Over 300 documentary filmmakers, commissioning editors, funders and related professionals from across the African continent and beyond participated in the 3 day talkfest. P2P is dedicated to the art, business and technology of documentary in Africa and in 2011 the event boasted a number of feature sessions and a line-up of master-classes designed for students and emerging filmmakers under the P2P Doc-school banner. The event is aimed at supporting and stimulating the vital documentary genre, a practice threatened by economic and political realities.
P2P Online is a newly undertaken legacy project and aims to make conference discussion and outcomes permanently available to a wider audience and is the first online resource of its kind to come from the African continent. The site offers video clips from ten key sessions held at P2P 2011 alongside additional resources on funding, organisations, film festivals and other resources for African documentary filmmakers. P2P Online is a virtual documentary conference including notable speakers such as international producer and director, Peter Wintonick, Moussa Sene Absa, a film director, writer, producer and screenwriter widely regarded as one of African cinema’s masters and vice-president of programming at ITVS, Claire Aguilar. The platform is aimed at dedicated documentary-lovers, emerging and established filmmakers and film students alike and extends P2P’s identity as space for support and critical interaction.
Highlights include the heated, controversial session Why Love Pirates?, which addresses piracy in a context where filmmakers needs are not met by legitimate distributors. Bridging the Distribution Gap confronts the lack of sustainable distribution for documentary. “How you make your film is subjective, but at the end of the day because it’s going to be a first draft of history… we have a certain obligation to the content being verifiable not just emotional.” So said Jihan El Tahri, a panelist on RealPolitik, Reality vs. Interpretation in the Issue Documentary today. Beyond Convention- Documentary as an Art Form features a panel of young edgy filmmakers and artists interested in each others approaches and outcomes
The most significant session of the conference Africa Unite: Towards an African Documentary Network saw the creation of The Documentary Network Africa (DNA). While DNA is still in its formative stages, it is gathering momentum and promises at the very least to create collegial bonds between documentary filmmakers on the continent.
Visit P2P online at People2people.co.za. Comments or suggestions are encouraged and should be sent to info@people2people.co.za"
Well done Planet of Snail and other MM winners at IDFA
By Charlie Phillips 28 November, 2011
MeetMarket alumni took the main awards at IDFA last week, with wins in Best Feature Length Doc, Special Jury Award, Audience Award and the Green Screen Award.
We're especially delighted to congratulate director Seung-Jun Yi and producer Min-Chul Kim whose Planet of Snail took the Best Feature Documentary award. Planet of Snail took part in the 2009 MeetMarket, with the MM team spotting the project before it had any funding. We’re very proud that MeetMarket set Planet of Snail on its international adventure and we’re very excited that it’s now won at IDFA. Check out their ipad app too!
A project from MeetMarket 2010, the Palestinian-set doc 5 Broken Cameras by Emad Burnat and Guy Davidi, was awarded the Special Jury Prize and the Audience Award - the latter with an unprecedented share of the vote. We're delighted to have helped in the successful funding of a film about the human cost of conflict that will leave audiences across the world in tears and a new resolve to call for peace.
We're delighted that both of these projects represent MeetMarket's support of new voices being brought to market from areas the world under-represented on the international scene. This is a commitment we'll continue to pursue in MeetMarket, along with a determination to support projects at an early stage without funding, and those docs exploring new styles of storytelling.
The Green Screen award was also won by a MeetMarket 2009 project - Bitter Seeds by Micha X. Peled, a doc with real social impact, about the cost of our consumption of cotton for Indian farmers.
For the full list of IDFA Awards see here
If you'd like to be in the next batch of MeetMarket projects being introduced to hundreds of the world's top funders and mentors, applications open January 3rd - information can be found on the MeetMarket page
Congratulations to Oscar short list finalists
By Hussain Currimbhoy 21 November, 2011
The Oscar top 15 short list is up! Check it out here
big congratulations to the Doc/Fest 2011 fellows that are on the list: Danfung for his unstoppable 'Hell And Back Again', Marshall Curry for the prescient and compelling 'If A Tree Falls' and James Marsh's summer hit 'Project Nim'.
This short list will be shortened soon, but good to see some of our favourites on the list.
I have noticed a lot of bemusement from many who are wondering why on earth Steve James' 'The Interruprters' is not on this short list. Crazy no? Those who have seen it have called it 'life changing' in the same way 'Hell And Back' was to many. Even if Oscars represent a great career (or career move) as much as they represent exceptional filmmaking, 'The Interrupters' really oughta be on this list!
Just Do It DVD Release
By Charlie Phillips 12 November, 2011
We've unashamedly been big supporters of Just Do It, Emily James' doc about environmental activists using civil(ised) disobedience to encourage action against those making runaway climate change carry on.
You may have noticed this - they were in MeetMarket 2010, we world-premiered the film in 2011, we promoted their crowdfunding campaigns, and generally tweeted and facebooked the hell out of their activities.
What we couldn't have totally predicted was that the kind of direct action depicted in the film would go worldwide and mainstream with the Occupy movement. So, though Climate Camp might seem in the film like an audacious thing to take part in, camping out in a public space and criticising dominant economics is now what 'normal' people do too.
So, Just Do It represents an early warning document of social change, and for that reason, you might like to have it in your house, so buy their DVD - now available to get instantly, distributed by the brilliant Dogwoof team. It even comes with a free guide to becoming an activist, which is lovely.
So, what we want to know is - who's making the worldwide hit doc about Occupy then?
On the Politics of Docs
By Charlie Phillips 20 September, 2011
Last night I went to a listen to a panel as part of the Ken Loach season at the BFI Southbank – a season that, as we’re tweeted about a number of times, has set out its stall to be about his documentaries as much as his fictions. This is good, because he’s not known for his docs, partly because they’ve had a nasty habit of being banned.
The banning of his Save The Children doc from the 70s has been written about a fair bit – I’ve still not seen it, but I hear it’s got an awareness built into it of the likelihood of a good banning. But last night, the panel was discussing his other famous banned docs, the “Questions of Leadership” season he made in the early 80s that pinned the decline of industrial workers’ strengths onto their corporatist leadership. Scheduled to go out on Channel 4 in 1983, a mysterious pressure was allegedly put on the various boards of Channel 4, the IBO (forerunner to OFCOM), Central Television and whoever else allegedly pulled the strings in British telly at the time.
I’ve no way of knowing whether Ken’s claims, and the outraged red-faced claims of a Brunel University academic next to him on the panel who retained the anger of the 30 year old banning, were entirely accurate. Water’s gone under the bridge and been churned and turned back again many times. Ken’s done OK for himself even with the bannings, the union movement did have a massive decline in power, Thatcher got her wish to emasculate the unions and withdraw manufacturing from the UK and TV got less willing to commission docs like Questions of Leadership in the first place, let alone then go and ban them later. 30 years have passed, I was barely born when it first happened, and the battles have been fought and analysed.
So the panel tasked itself with contextualising this ban today, and seeing whether we still have censorship before docs hit the living room. There was a obligatory complaint about the BBC’s coverage of Israel-Palestine – because a left-wing panel is contractually obliged to feature a mention of this regardless of context or people aren’t getting their money’s worth – and a reaffirmation that still now, impartiality obligations of public service broadcasters are used partially and prohibit progressive ideas in documentaries or current affairs getting on TV.
There was some accusatory talk of more space being given to the ‘extreme’-ish Right than the ‘extreme’-ish Left but the general drift was more that TV commissioning is all centre-centre-centre, apolitical, fluffy, terrified of any radical talk. And so, Mainstream Media isn’t transmitting radical politics, and Ken’s docs wouldn’t be commissioned, screened, or supported today by TV people.
OK let’s pause. Many of you would argue with this analysis and give examples of radical docs you’ve seen or commissioned, and though definitions of ‘radical’ would vary, you might be broadly right. In the current affairs zone perhaps more than docs, but you’d be right with at least some of those examples. Many of you could give personal experience of being turned down for a radical political doc by a broadcaster, or know of times when a doc you’d heard about as a commission or in development mysteriously never emerged. You’d also be right – there aren’t any commissioners that I know of who explicitly want to showcase socialist, cooperative or class-conscious programming on a large basis. Was there in 1983? I don’t know – I was a toddler.
But now here’s where my irritation at a missed opportunity rose last night. Ken Loach et al, meet the internet. You say you’ve met it, but that it’s not something you really understand, even though you know should. So the biggest opportunity for a grassroots, cooperative, structurally-radical technological platform since the invention of TV isn’t something you choose to understand or use? That, to me, is not good. Dismissing the internet as not the Mainstream Media when it is actually less marginal than broadcast for a lot of people, is not good. Complaining to an audience of like-minded souls that a small collection of people won’t show your films, when millions of people would willingly watch them (and pay for them) online, is not good. Put your “Questions of Leadership” docs online, Ken, and that audience who needs to hear these radical voices will do. There’s really not a problem here, apart from an unwillingness to move beyond complaints about commissioners. Online distribution solves it.
I understand concerns that online, no-one will accidently stumble across radicalism in the way that they may have done in the 80s. But those times, if they ever existed (and I suspect not), are no more. With a good understanding of marketing, social networking and champions to advocate them, these films would be seen by a lot of people online, and not just the predicable audience. In every other art form, consumers don’t wait for the media to come to them, they’re getting it by recommendation and grassroots spreading. This is the alternative media distribution that Ken and co were dreaming of and it’s here. How do new grassroots political movements emerge now? Through organisation online and decentred distribution of information. Is film doing this? It’s starting to, but not very much.
I’m bullish about this. Ken Loach, our most treasured and wonderful political filmmaker, should be too. The dream is here of our own networks for distributing radical documentaries to big numbers. So why am I watching a panel complaining about commissions in 1983?
Doc/Fest tour kicks off
By Hussain Currimbhoy 09 September, 2011
Tonight marks the kick off of the Doc/Fest tour at the BFI! Of course, we are starting with Steve James engrossing, timely, indelible 'The Interrupters' which took home the Doc/Fest Special Jury prize at June's festival.
The rest of the weekend will feature screenings of the Youth Jury winner, 'We Are Poets' on Saturday afternoon followed by 'Give Up Tomorrow', the Audience Winner, at 18:00. And what better way to spend a Sunday that by seeing Anthony Baxter's Green Doc winning film 'You've Been Trumped' about the blessed Donald Trump and his bid to build a golf course in a place he has no business being in. All films (except 'The Interruptuers') will be followed by Q&As by the filmmakers so make sure you get tix cuz they are selling out fast.
Check out the full BFI listings here.
The tour then starts a national wander through ten cities in the UK so be sure to check out at least one or two screenings to get your fill. Its so rare that documentaries actually get some time in cinemas so the tour needs your support to prove to the distributors, the writers and the filmmakers that film lovers do indeed come to the cinema to see documentaries beucause if there ever there was a time to revist what is really happening in the UK, now is that time.
See you at the BFI!
( And congrats to Martin Parsons who won the signed poster of 'The Interrupeters'! thanks to Dogwoof for the love!)
Come to PICNIC!
By Floury Crum 19 August, 2011
If you are planing what to do this September, then you should definitely consider going to PICNIC.
PICNIC is a three day event in Amsterdam that brings together the most innovative speakers that are developing interactive projects and creative business models that reflect new digital developments and are keen to expose themselves to ideas outside their own area of expertise.
Besides being incredibly fun and inspiring, it's an amazing place to develop your factual and interactive projects, to think differently about what can be done, collaborate and to learn from people that are experts in thinking outside the box.
The programme this year will be focussed on Urban Futures and will discus how infrastructure, society, design, sustainability and media will come together to collaborate on the future of cities.
Doc/Fest friend Lucy Walker will be hosting a Transmedia Lab and there will be sessions on Urban Collaboration and Storytelling and the Future of Television.
PICNIC takes place on September 14 - 16 in Amsterdam's most exciting creative area in the north of Amsterdam.
More information on PICNIC you can find here: http://www.picnicnetwork.org
PICNIC has kindly offered previous Doc/Fest delegates a 20% discount of the Picnic festival pass. Please email Floury Crum at floury@sidf.co.uk to get your unique code to the festival or for further information.
The 'Project of the Month' on reelisor - upload new projects to reelisor
By Charlie Phillips 19 August, 2011
reelisor is the European network for connecting documentary projects with funders and collabrotators, and they're initiating a new scheme called Project of the Month where the projects that they think are the very best to have been uploaded over a month will be reviewed by a committee of international experts, who will crown an overall winner.
The winner will be profiled on reelisor and will receive personal mentoring, advice and connections for their project to help them to progress it forwards in the international doc market.
All you need to do is to register on, and submit a new project to, reelisor by Monday September 19th. You can go to reelisor here
The reelisor team will then choose a shortlist of projects which will go before the eyes of a team of experts:
Karolina Lidin, Nordic Film and TV Fund
Charlie Phillips, Sheffield Doc/Fest
Iikka Vehkalahti, YLE, Finland
Margaret Jonasdottir, Produce, Iceland
They'll decide on an overall winner, who'll get profiled and mentored, but reelisor will also be giving feedback to all projects that are submitted to them between now and September 19th, whether shortlisted or winners! So what are you waiting for?
Submit your new projects and get some attention! Visit reelisor. Mentoring will be specially tailored to the needs of the winners.