While Amsterdam certainly boasts its own unique cast of characters that one can observe on the streets, in the stores and the coffee shops, some of the most intriguing people I met during my stay at IDFA were on the film screen. When you immerse yourself in as many films as I did (an average of four per day), one comes away with a contact high from the encounters with unique individuals with unique stories and circumstances that stay with you (with me, at least). And while I am already...
Asian and European films dominated the top awards at IDFA, the International Documentary Film Festival, which held its awards gala yesterday afternoon at the historic art nouveau movie palace, the Tuschinski. The audience, made up of filmmakers, professionals and doc film buffs, loudly applauded the winners and the overall excellence of this year's program.
The VPRO IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary (with a cash prize of €12,500) went to Lixin Fan for Last Train Ho...
At a film festival such as IDFA that is exclusively devoted to documentary film, a dedicated viewer (which, at a minimum of 4 films per day, qualifies me) cannot help but be constantly batted from feelings of outrage and anger to feelings of optimism and hope. Documentaries, unlike any other art form, really get under your skin with real lives, some of them quite desperate and terribly sad, that break down the tenuous barrier of us versus them. To really appreciate a documentary, it ...
At a typically informal gathering at the Festival's resident club on Wednesday evening, the jurors in various categories in the IDFA Awards competitions announced the three-film nominees before a packed house of anxious filmmakers and guests. The Awards themselves will be annnounced on Friday afternoon at the official awards ceremony held at the art nouveau palace, the Tuschinksi. Film screenings of the winners and other titles continues through Sunday.
IDFA Competition for Fe...
Amsterdam has a rather valid reputation as a refuge for the not completely normal. Misfits from across the continent and across the seas find the city's open nature and history of tolerance a welcoming invitation. So, when an Amsterdam institution like IDFA, the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, announces a program entitled "Not Normal", the mind only boggles. In fact, one of the key themes at this year's Festival is the theme of unconventionality ...
The subject of music, its influences, its artists and its role in cultural life, are examined in the 18 music-themed documentaries that are being showcased this week at IDFA, the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, the largest gathering of docu-files in the world. Aside from the films themselves, IDFA is sponsoring Dance Nights in the festival center Escape every evening, with performances by an eclectic array of DJs and bands.
The film program embrac...
The on-going conflict in the Middle East provides a tableau for a diverse group of films at IDFA, the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam, the largest documentary film event on the planet. The films range from classic reportage to more intimate explorations of the passions, terrors and conflicts that are generated in this turbulent part of the world.
Spanish filmmaker Alberto Arce has teamed up with a Palestinian colleague Gazan Mohammad Rujailah for the film TO SHOOT AN...
Israeli filmmaker Eyal Sivan has been asked by IDFA to program a personal Top Ten List of his favorite films for this year's event. Sivan is in Amsterdam for the premiere of his latest film Jaffa, The Orange Clockwork, which screens in the IDFA Competition for Feature-Length Documentaries. During the festival, Sivan will also present a masterclass in which he will explain his choices for his list.
Eyal Sivan grew up in Jerusalem and worked as a photograp...
If you are an industry professional who works in the world of documentaries, it is a pretty sure bet that you are spending this week in Amsterdam at the IDFA International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Aside from the hundreds of completed films on display, the Festival sponsors a co-production market for filmmakers to network with potential financiers and distributors for new projects (that will most probably come to IDFA next year as completed films).
IDFA’s annual c...
Dutch cinema circuit Pathé Netherlands, a long-time collaborator with IDFA through its Tuschinski and Munt theaters which host many of the festival’s events and screenings, is launching a new documentary label called Pathé Docs, aimed at bringing documentaries to a wider audience.
The label, which has been devised in close collaboration with IDFA, will go live during the festival with the screening of three IDFA titles – Icelandic eco-doc Dreamland, Michael Moore’s C...
Getting a prize at IDFA, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, can be of major significance to a documentary film at the start of its long journey through the Festival circuit and, hopefully, to theatrical, television and ancillary distribution. The Festival's imprimatur is highly regarded and respected in the world of programmers and festival directors, who are here in Amsterdam scouring for the best in non-fiction film.
Here is the first part of the films compet...
The American documentary U.N. ME, a lacerating look at the inefficiencies of the United Nations, has its word premiere at the IDFA International Documentary Festival Amsterdam this week. In a film that exposes the incompetence and corruption at the heart of the United Nations, filmmakers Ami Horowitz and Matthew Groff show how an organization created to ennoble mankind now actually enables evil and sows global chaos.
When the United Nations was founded more than sixty yea...
Veteran documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman was honored at IDFA's Opening Night ceremonies last evening with a Living Legends Award. There is much truth in the name of the award......Wiseman is a true living legend who continues his 50-year streak of creating intriguing, involving and sometimes shocking documentaries at the tender age of 79. He shows no signs of slowing down. His lastest project, LA DANSE, a portrait of the Ballet Company of the French National Opera.
Freder...
One could call it a documentary deluge.......IDFA, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the world's largest event devoted to the non-fiction form, is expecting over 2000 international guests over the next 10 days. If you are in and into docs, Amsterdam is ground zero for film premieres, special events, chic parties and industry seminars and networking sessions.
The Festival has clocked in some 2200 accredited guests from The Netherlands and around the world to at...
The world of documentary film has descended on the city of Amsterdam for IDFA, the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, the world's largest and most diverse showcase of non-fiction film from around the world. With documentaries showing muscle at the theatrical box office, as well as providing a well of programming for new electronic distribution formats, the hunger for the real is greater than ever. By offering a diverse program of film premieres, special...
IDFA is deeply saddened to hear that Wouter Barendrecht, founder and co-chairman of international sales and production company Fortissimo Films, passed away suddenly at the age of 43....
The Jan Vrijman Fund has concluded the first selection round of 2009 with the selection of 21 new projects from amongst others Mali, Sri Lanka, Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Iran....
Arrested by the Iranian government in July 2008, filmmaker Mohammad Ehsani has been imprisoned for almost a year. Ehsani's award-winning documentaries deal with critical social issues in Iran....
Arrested by the Iranian government in July 2008, filmmaker Mohammad Ehsani has been imprisoned for almost a year. Ehsani's award-winning documentaries deal with critical social issues in Iran....
In January, several documentary makers familiar to the IDFA audience were awarded at Sundance 2009. IDFA is pleased to congratulate Kim Longinotto, Havana Marking and Anders Østergaard....
