The week here at the
International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam has flown by, and has been so overwhelmingly busy, that I haven't had a chance to blog much. I've seen dozens of documentaries and attended many panel discussions, the pitching Forum, the Talk Shows, and have talked with many filmmakers, buyers, programmers, distributors and other participants, some of them coming to IDFA now for many years. I'll share their perspectives and my brand-new ones in an extensive report for the magazine's next issue--the trends, the issues, and the prevailing technological frontier (nothing new under the sun, really). The prevailing mood here is a very mixed one, as both filmmakers and sales agents and those that distribute film (in this case, documentary), try to navigate the many sea changes in making, marketing and distributing mass media.
To be perfectly frank, I haven't seen anything quite along the lines of
Pernille Rose Gronkjaer's beautiful
The Monastery: Mr. Vig and the Nun, last year's Joris Ivens prize-winner. The same company,
Tju Bang Film, brought a film called
Mechanical Love here this year that I liked very much, but the consensus from people I've spoken with who acquire docs for a living, has been that the program of films has been a bit underwhelming. I was noting to a friend, that what I've seen here at IDFA this past week doesn't compare to the many stellar nonfiction films I've seen come out of the US this past year, from neophyte filmmakers like
Jennifer Venditti to long-time pros like
Doug Block. No film here has startled me with its creativity in pushing the form as
Jessica Yu did with her
Protagonist, nor really moved me deeply as much as, say,
The Bridge did when I first saw that film. It will be interesting to see what the festival programmers take away from Amsterdam to show this year at their own regional fests. In talking to some of them that have been shopping here, there isn't a huge amount that seems compelling enough to be considered a must. We'll see what comes out of Rotterdam and Berlin.
There were a few films that were standouts, of course, and I will write about those in the near future, but this year's IDFA is wrapping up with the awards ceremony tonight and that little fest in Utah will be the focus for most of us right now. I'll post the winners from tonight in a bit. To see the list of nominees, you can visit my site
here.
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posted by Pamela Cohn @ 12/01/2007 10:00:00 AM
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