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Written by Sandy Mandelberger
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Wednesday, 03 December 2008 00:33 |
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 IDFA, the world’s largest documentary film festival, came to a smashing and glamorous climax last evening at the IDFA Awards Ceremony, held in Amsterdam. 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 fascinating and historically significant work was shot by native, covert video journalists, who risked their lives in getting the story out to the rest of the world. A few have since been arrested and are spending time in jail awaiting criminal prosecutions.
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IDFA 2008 - Reflections on a killing |
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Written by Leo Bankersen
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Sunday, 30 November 2008 19:55 |
On my last day at the festival I attended a screening of the Israeli film Z32 by Avi Mograbi, one of my favourite directors. It's a very reflective, and even self-reflective, documentary in which we see Mograbi, know for his unorthodox approach and tendency to parody, struggle to find the proper way to present this story of an Israeli soldier. He was involved in a retaliatory action during which several Palestinian policemen were deliberately killed. Mograbi uses a variety of techniques, and even sings his comments. "I wondered whether I should shoot it as a straight interview or make an opera out of it", the filmmaker explained at the Q&A after the screening. He landed somewhere in the middle, and the result is quite intriguing. Very personal and with unusual depth, leaving a lot to think about. Yes, there is still room for adventure in filmmaking.
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IDFA 2008 - New ways of showing |
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Written by Leo Bankersen
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Friday, 28 November 2008 17:31 |
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Is 'data visualisation' a geeky way to say 'documentary'? Maybe yes, if you consider it's all about the various ways in which images can represent reality. Those phrases and more (I also learned what 'excel monkeys' are) were coined during an afternoon presentation of Doclab, the IDFA-sidebar that is all about new media, internet and cross-platform documentary projects. And it wasn't as pretentious as I had expected. |
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IDFA 2008 - Global warnings |
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Written by Leo Bankersen
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Thursday, 27 November 2008 08:09 |
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While idling between screenings, someone handed me a leaflet urging me to see the The Age of Stupid that was about to start. I had some time to spare, so I thought why not. This UK documentary by Franny Armstrong, having its world premiere in the Panorama section of IDFA, turns out to be another global warning, very much in the vein of An Inconvenient Truth. Only this time not with Al Gore, but with Pete Postlethwaite as a fictional librarian in the year 2055, when the earth has become an inhospitable desert. From a last refuge at the North Pole he is showing us footage of the hurricanes and melting glaciers of our times. All the signs were there, so why didn't we do someting? |
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IDFA 2008 - Bewilderment in Congo |
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Written by Leo Bankersen
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Monday, 24 November 2008 22:14 |
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On the press conference after the opening of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam director Ally Derks mentioned Africa, greed and exploitation and globalisation as important themes running through the programme. |
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