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NEWSLETTER N°6
EDITORIAL
Yves Jeanneau -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------News
DOC BUENOS AIRES/LATIN SIDE OF THE DOC will then be:
The DBA / LSD jury will determine the distribution of development awards that are offered to Latin projects at this edition: www.lafemme-endormie.com/vidaloca -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Dossier
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The success of the 20th edition (and the party) is now in the past. It reinvigorated and filled us with hope. We are now preparing the 21st edition so that it will definitively mark this 21st century. Sunny Side will continue to be first and foremost the Market for ALL documentaries, in all its present and future forms. From films for television and cinema to series, from educational to investigative, from webdocs to cross-media platforms - this diversity is our genre’s strength.
Screening “LA VIDA LOCA”, on Thursday, November 26th at 8:00 pmAt the last Mipcom one stand never emptied out. It belonged to independent producers from Brazil (Brazilian TV Producers). This was the same stand that only two years earlier counted only six production companies. This year it included 32 entities; double that of the previous MipTV! Two-thirds of them were documentary producers. In Brazil, as in the rest of Latin America, media production is experiencing a revolution, and the Brazilian example at Mipcom is neither anecdotal nor isolated. Latin America is fertile in talent and ideas. It is brimming with authors who want to tell their and their country’s histories. But until recently this landscape remained unprofessional, lacking structured production and distribution channels, and money. Large countries like Argentina, Mexico and Brazil, but also smaller ones like Chile or Uruguay, have decided to bulldoze these significant obstacles with the goal of catapulting their local productions onto the international stage.
1 - Professionalizing the industry"The Latin American documentary is nourished by a tumultuous history, ethnic and geographic diversity, the insatiable curiosity of its authors. As a result, productions are massive, abundant and very creative," says Françoise Gazio, a producer for Ideal Audience, who works extensively with Latin American companies. "There are many Latin American documentaries, but most are made for local broadcasting, and are neither written down or completely developed,” says Patricia Boero, Deputy Director of Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB). According to Boero, producers and directors are not used to considering the needs of international distributors or broadcasters. The running time of the films does not conform to timeslots, character development is nonexistent, and the expression of ideas is unclear. “The structure of the film and the script often need reviewing. One interview follows another, not allowing the film to ‘breathe’ or viewers to ‘digest’ the information. In addition, interviews are often done in very tight close-ups, which make subtitling difficult,” adds Boero. "Only six years ago authors did not write down their film,” admits Carmen Guarini of the Argentine company Cine Ojo. “They thought that reality should just be shown, not told. But today things are better because we have set up training resources and established film schools.” Among these is Doc Buenos Aires (which merged this year with Latin Side Of The Doc), created by Cine Ojo and dedicated to independent documentary production. Doc Buenos Aires has helped professionalize the industry, assisting authors, directors and producers in writing and developing original projects. The event is open to independent creators from Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Venezuela, Colombia and Ecuador. 2- Diversifying funding sources
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Today INCAA finances about 50 films per year, with the average sum of $40,000 per film. Moreover, to boost local production and facilitate its distribution, INCAA introduced protectionist regulation in early 2009. Now theatre operators must screen Argentine-made films for a period of at least two weeks. For its part, the Brazilian government has begun taxing US television networks in order to finance local production. It is also allowing large companies to invest 4 percent of owed federal taxes into audiovisual production. So companies like Petrobras, the energy giant, have become major investors in the independent Brazilian audiovisual industry, and have been instrumental in structuring it. 3 - Encourage documentary’s
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Professional industry events in Latin America
During the last few years, industry events have multiplied across Latin America. Their goal is to promote local production and foster the emergence of international co-productions. Here is a look at a few of them.
- DOCSDF (15-24 October 2009, Mexico City, Mexico)
From October 15 to 24, Mexico City will host the fourth edition of DOCSDF, a festival that aims to screen a selection of national and international documentary productions. While the films come from all over the world, the event promotes Latin American productions with an award for best Ibero-American film. Directors, producers, academics, researchers and documentary film amateurs meet in the festival’s sidelines. And for nine days, Mexico City residents can discover documentary film. - www.docsdf.com
- DocBsAs/LSD (25-27 November 2009, Buenos Aires, Argentina).
www.sunnysideofthedoc.com/uk/lsd_presentation.php
- PicDoc (30 November - 5 December, 2009, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
The Association of Independent Television Producers (BTVP), in partnership with the Brazilian Association of Independent Television Producers (ABPI-TV), the Audiovisual Department of the Ministry of Culture (SAV/MINC) and the Brazilian Agency for Export Promotion and Investment (APEX-Brazil) will launch the first ever PicDoc. The event will allow Brazilian producers to present their projects to an expert panel of documentary professionals from around the world (see feature article).
www.braziliantvproducers.com/picdoc
- It's All True - E Tudo Verdade (8-18 April 2010, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
This international documentary film festival, founded and directed by Amir Labaki, will celebrate its fifteenth year in 2010. The event aims to highlight the best examples of South American documentary film. It is financed through national sponsors such as Petrobras and CPFL Energia, as well as institutional partners like Oi Futuro, an organisation created to reduce racial inequality in Brazil.
www.itsalltrue.com.br/2010/index.asp
- Fidoc (June 2010 TBD, Santiago, Chile)
This international documentary film festival, directed by Gonzalo Maza, held its thirteenth edition in June. A growing number of international guests come to meet writers, directors, producers and film students from Chile and South America. This year, for the first time, the competition included a large number of high-quality South American films. http://fidocs.uniacc.cl/
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The soul of Latin documentary according to:
- Françoise Gazio, Producer (Idéale Audience) :
"The Latin documentary is very imaginative, colourful and creative. The Latin imagery is very rich, and this shines through its films. It is nourished by the continent’s great ethnic diversity, a tumultuous political and social history, and an immense cultural wealth. The world’s captured in documentaries are very different. We find social documentaries that address localised problems, as well as films that communicate the geographical splendour or other treasures of a country. By way of other distribution channels, such as festivals, we can also find very politically-charged films that expose government failures."
- Carmen Guarini, Producer (Ciné Ojo) :
"The Latin documentary does not have a single narrative style. It is plural. It invariably deals with issues of collective memory, indigenous minorities, politics and social problems. Politics often gives rise to films that defend a cause. So we try to work on political questions through the lens of history rather than through political militancy. Films that deal with the subject of memory are often of very high quality. Some filmmakers, Chileans in particular, still work in exile and make films dealing with the recent past that carry great political and emotional force."
- Patricia Boero, Deputy Director (Latino Public Broadcasting) :
"An exceptional richness and diversity exist in Latin documentaries. The films cover varied social issues, from individual and personal experience to shared history, from the formal to the experimental. I admire the work of Juan Carlos Rulfo and Natalia Amada in Mexico, and closely follow the work of Santiago Alvarez and Patricio Guzman, as well as the more experimental work of Jorge Furtado, such as in La isla de las flores (The Island of the Flowers). But I'm also interested in the many young documentary filmmakers who are emerging across all of Latin America, and which we discover at festivals. And finally, I pay much attention to work of documentary filmmakers who are learning to intertwine genres, such as Walter Salles in Central do Brasil, or more recently, Enrique Fernandez and Cesar Charlone in El Baño del Papa (The Pope's Bathroom), a film that uses both professional actors and real people.
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FOCUS
Agnus Dei : Lamb of God shooting
In June 2009 Sunny Side of the Doc launched the BIPS - Best International Project Showcase. These theme-based pitch sessions were created to encourage discussions about international documentary projects. One of the projects, Agnus Dei: Lamb of God, presented by the Mexican production company Pepa Films, takes on a taboo subject, difficult to digest in particularly religious Latin America: sexual abuse perpetrated within the Catholic church. So it would be no easy task to find willing partners, or secure the total budget set at $400,000.
"Things have moved forward since the Sunny Side," says Samuel Sosa of Pepa Films. “The director, Alejandra Sanchez, has already started shooting. We have nearly reached our funding goal. Last June, we approached a French company with whom we are about to sign a contract for joint production and distribution.
"However, paedophilia cases in Mexico are much more complex than we first imagined,” adds Sosa. “Approaching the right characters, then convincing them to participate, has lengthened our schedule. Without a doubt this film will change the world’s perception about sexual abuse, taking into consideration both the victims’ and the paedophiles’ perspectives. Mexico is a deeply Catholic country and has often treated sexuality through the prism of religious institutions. Times have changed. Society’s concepts about good and evil have also evolved. Society has itself pushed the limits of tolerance of sexual conduct, far from those taught by the church for the last 500 years.”
Agnus Dei retells the story of four people: Jesús Romero, José Bonilla, and two young seminarians. Jesús Romero was eleven years old when he became an altar boy. He wanted to become a priest. His parish priest abused him for ten years. José Bonilla is his lawyer. One day, Bonilla discovers that his own son was molested by his school’s football coach. The Congregation of the Legionaries of Christ owns the Oxford School. This film tells the story of four men’s relationship with the Catholic church, and their widely different points of view, from the idealization of purity and chastity, to the most repressible sexual practices, like paedophilia.
Alejandra Sanchez received several awards for her first documentary Ni Una Mas (Not One More, 2001), but has been recognised in particular for her first feature film Bajo Juarez, la ciudad devorando a sus hijas (Lower Juarez: A city devouring its daughters), which was selected for Sundance in 2006, and won awards at the San Diego Latin Film Festival (2007), Sunny Side of the Doc (2007) and the Chicago Film Festival (2008).
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NEWS and...
Documentary Battles - 20 years of true stories
I asked for contributions from a number of personalities in the documentary world who have all had an influence over the last 20 years. Some have worked for television channels, others have directed films and the philosopher Paul Virilio has examined the concept of speed and catastrophes! Each from their different viewpoint, these personalities have enlarged on the questions raised in the previous texts with talent and sincerity, and sometimes humour. They speak to us from London, Helsinki, Bogotá, Toronto, Paris and La Rochelle, providing us with insights into documentary combats all over the world...
Yves Jeanneau.
Special offer - The book Bilingual (English & French) «Documentary Battles - 20 years of true stories». Download the purchase on : www.sunnysideofthedoc.com/uk
4 Screens European Festival – 3rd edition – Paris, 18-20 November, 2009.
« Join us for three days at the heart of the digital revolution at the 4 Screens European Festival. Some 50 films distinguished by their commitment to examining today's world will grace our screens whether they were originally made for the cinema, TV, the Web or mobile devices. The Festival also functions as a setting for sharing opinions and know-how. That's why our University of Images offers a full and varied program of conferences, workshops and lecture-discussions aimed at professionals, students and anybody else who's passionately interested in the world of images.”- www.festival-4ecrans.eu
... Events in la ROchelle
Escales Documentaires – Les 9èmes Escales Documentaires - November, 9th to 15th, 2009 / La Rochelle. www.carre-amelot.net/escalesdocumentaires
Festival du Film d’Aventure – The 6th edition, November 19th, 20th and 21st, 2009 / La Rochelle - Encan conference center. www.festival-film-aventure.com
soon
ASD – Asian Side of the Doc in Hong Kong.
ASIA - EUROPE Coproduction Event / 22-25 March, 2010
After LSD, the next Rendez-Vous of coproduction will take place in Asia. Find our special “dossier” in our next Newsletter.
21st Sunny Side of the Doc - 22 > 25 JUNE 2010, in La Rochelle.
Sunny Side of the Doc - DOC SERVICES - 21 bis Quai Maubec / 17000 La Rochelle - France | 24 rue Beccaria / 75012 Paris - France
Tel : +33(0)5.46.55.79.79 / Fax : +33(0)5.46.34.46.52