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....
Do we need movie critics? US newspapers and magazines increasingly think not. In recent years, many of the most celebrated film reviewers in the US have either retired or lost their jobs....
Also, watch the report on the FORUM and see the results of the Any Media workshop. Watch IDFA TV on the homepage or following this link....
Sunday, November 30--------IDFA came to a smashing and glamorous climax last evening at the IDFA Awards Ceremony. Winning the Joris Ivens Competition, the Festival's most prestigious prize, was Burma VJ--Reporting From A Closed Country by Danish director Anders Ostergaard. The film is a gripping chronicle of the 2007 uprising by Burmese monks, which creates a political and religious crisis in a country that is viewed as the most repressive regime on earth. Nearly all the footage in this fascin...
Saturday, November 29-----As IDFA began to wind down in anticipation of its Awards Gala this evening, here are some bits and pieces announced or experienced in the past week:
CROSS MEDIA PROJECTS AT IDFA FORUM
In addition to the traditional documentaries that were pitched at the IDFA Forum this past week, three projects were invited that deliberately cross media. Thee include the ambitious 24berlin-A Day In The Life, marking the 20th anniversary of the fa...
Saturday, November 29---------One of the pleasures for me in attending the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA) is the theatrical experience of viewing "serious cinema" in a plush environment. With its move last year to the Rembrandtplein, IDFA has been able to license two of Amsterdam's premiere theaters: the art deco movie palace the Tuschinski and the modern multiplex Pathe Munt. Both theaters offer a widescreen and "big" presentation of what is often...
On one level, 'Necrobusiness' is an amusing account of how three business partners fall out when their business strategy goes awry. On another, it is a terrifying tale of murder, blackmail, and ultimately betrayal....
IDFA’s Kids and Docs sidebar, showcasing international documentaries made for children aged eight to thirteen, has gone from strength to strength this year, with sell-out screenings most afternoons....
Burma VJ (Denmark/Sweden/England/Norway
Friday, November 28-------As IDFA enters its final weekend, the front runners in the various competition categories have been announced. At the nightly IDFA Talks, an assembly of filmmakers, producers, programmers and IDFA staff anxiously awaited the announcements of the final nominees in the main Festival competitions. The list is included below, with information on the award winners coming soon on this blog.
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Thursday, November 27-----While the accent at IDFA is on the new crop of documentaries being created around the world, there is also a healthy respect for career retrospectives to showcase for both filmmakers and audiences alike the themes and techniques of earlier non-fiction masters.
At this year’s event, the Festival is presenting two such retrospectives. 110 Years of Joris Ivens, named for the most famous Dutch documentarian Joris Ivens, is celebrating the 110th birthday of th...
Thursday, November 27------Yesterday saw the close of one of IDFA’s most important professional ventures, the Forum for International Co-Financing of Documentaries. IDFA organized the first Forum in 1993 and has seen the event grow in stature, number of projects and interest from film and television funders and programmers. The original aim was to establish an international network that would facilitate contact between independent documentary producers and television broadcasters. This has e...
Wednesday, November 26-----I arrived at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam yesterday to find….an event very much in full swing. The Festival had, in fact, opened the Thursday before, so the hundreds of international visitors who have descended to Amsterdam were already fully oriented. I’ve attended IDFA several times in the past, but this is the first time since it fully relocated from its traditional location on the Leidseplein to the more upscale surroundings of the Re...
Tuesday, November 25------As part of the parallel Amsterdam India Festival, IDFA is presenting a program it calls East Side Stories, featuring 17 contemporary documentaries from India. This unique look at the emerging documentary movement in one of Asia's most complex and thriving cultures offers a rare look at different aspects of this fascinating region, a country in transition trying to balance its age-old traditions with its new status of economic development and increased international cl...
Monday, November 24--------A new addition to this year's IDFA is the introduction of Doclab, a new program section that explores the relationship between new media and the documentary form. The main theme for this year is data visualisation.
In all modern cultures, a dizzying amount of information is compiled by government bodies, market researchers and large companies like Google. In aggregate, this data offers an accurate if exhausting account of our colle...
Which sequences enhance your documentary and which ones eventually do not work? In this section, filmmakers show a treasured scene that did not make it to the final film....
Sunday, November 23-----Making its international premiere at IDFA this weekend is the Peruvian documentary Lucanamarca. The film tells the intriguing and disturbing story of the 1983 massacre of 69 residents of the remote village of Lucanamarca, who were brutally murdered by members of the Maoist guerrilla movement known as Shining Path. Among the victims were numerous women and children. The bloodbath was an act of retaliation for the murder of one of the movement's leaders and the first in a...
