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Subscribe to the RSS feedLittle Heaven invited to Goodpitch 2012
Lieven Corthouts’ Little Heaven is to screen at the Good Pitch² Festival at The Hague (27 March). At the fest, eight documentary filmmakers working on human rights and justice projects are invited to present their films to a number of leading broadcasters and NGOs, as well as other participants who might be able to help them spread their work.
Little Heaven is the harrowing tale of an extraordinary orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia’s capital city. On their thirteenth birthday, children in this particular orphanage are told that they were born with HIV. It is a hard and demanding story, but also a hopeful one, thanks to the zest for life shown by the children’s and their carers.
Karla’s Arrival makes a stop in Brussels
Koen Suidgeest’s Karla’s Arrival (La llegada de Karla) was given a bill at the very first ALBA Festival de Cine bill. The ALBA Festival took place in Brussels from 19 – 29 Januari and is the result of a collaboration between the embassies of Cuba, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Ecuador and Venezuela. The festival is named after the ALBA treaty, which was conducted by the governments of these countries in order to preserve their cultural identities.
Earlier on, Karla’s Arrival (La llegada de Karla) made a screening at the Verzio Documentary Film Festival (6-10 November 2011) in Budapest, as well as at the This Human World Festival (30 November – 10 December 2011) in Vienna. Both showings were attended by the director. The documentary also screened at the Documenta Madrid Festival, the Prague One World Human Rights Festival and the New York International Latino Film Festival, to name just a few. The film was awarded the second prize at the Documenta festival.
War Is Not a Game on tour of duty in Canada
Flemish documentary filmmaker Lode Desmet is currently touring in Canada with his film War Is Not A Game (A la guerre comme à la guerre). After its recent selection for the prestigious IDFA 2011 line-up, Desmet was invited for a screening tour by the Canadian Office National du Film.
The documentary will be shown at 12 venues across the country, two of which are military bases. The film enjoyed a winning streak in Canada at the end of last year, grabbing awards at two fests: the NFB Colin Low Award for Most Innovative Canadian Documentary at the DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver (6-15 June 2011) and the Golden Sheaf for Best Documentary on History at the Yorkton Film Festival (26-29 May 2011).
The Dance Of Death
Snake Dance is a story of two men in the New Mexico desert. One was a cultural theorist and art historian who went mad during the aftermath of the First World War. The other was a physicist… and he was the father of the atomic bomb. Aby Warburg (1866-1929) and J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) can be seen as twisted reflections of one another: brilliant, cultured polymaths. One believed fervently in the healing powers of ritual, the ‘snake dance’ of the New Mexican Indians. The other, whether wittingly or not, unleashed the forces of destruction.
Belgian documentary maker Manu Riche first met English writer Patrick Marnham when he was making The Man Who Wasn’t Maigret (2003), a documentary about the pipe-smoking, sex-obsessed Belgian crime novelist, Georges Simenon, the creator of Inspector Maigret. Marnham’s biography of Simenon was the inspiration for Riche’s film, scripted by Steve Hawes. Marnham himself appeared on camera in the doc.
After this initial collaboration, Riche and Marnham were eager to work together. Riche was keen at the time to make a film about Congo. Marnham was busy trying to write a book about Oppenheimer, a project he eventually shelved after he had a disagreement with his US publisher and discovered that three other books on the same subject were in the work. In Snake Dance, we see him making contact by phone with Oppenheimer’s reclusive son Peter, who seems fascinated by the project but is too wary to want to appear on camera himself.
Desert Island and Grande Hotel grab FIPA kudos
Steve Thielemans’s Desert Island took the FIPA d’Or for Creative Documentary at this year's 25th International Festival of Audiovisual Programs (FIPA, 23-29 January). Lotte Stoops’ Grande Hotel received the Michel Mitrani Prize. No less than eight Flemish productions screened at FIPA this year.
The Michel Mitrani Award, named after the late founder of the festival and worth €8,000, is traditionally awarded by France Télévision on the night prior to the closing ceremony. The jury of five selected Grande Hotel from a total of seven nominated films from different sections of the festival.
Blue Bird and The Invader nominated in Göteborg
Nicolas Provost’s feature debut The Invader and Gust Van den Berghe’s Blue Bird have been nominated for The Ingmar Bergman International Debut Award at Sweden’s Göteborg International Film Festival (27 January-6 February). The festival also selected Lotte Stoops’ Grande Hotel and Tom Fassaert’s An Angel in Doel in the Dokumentärt and Visionärer sections respectively.
A total of eight films from around the world were nominated for the prestigious award. With two Flemish filmmakers nominated out of eight, Belgian cinema from Flanders clearly demonstrated its vibrancy and talent. The Ingmar Berman International Debut Award is awarded to “a debutant who in his film treats an existential theme with a dynamic or experimental approach to the cinematic means of expression.”
Corbijn doc joins Berlinale line-up
Klaartje Quirijns’s documentary Anton Corbijn Inside Out has been selected for the 62nd edition of the Berlinale International Film Festival (9 – 19 Febr). The Documentary will screen in the ‘Berlin Special’ section of the fest which also hosts films by Werner Herzog and Kevin Macdonald. Flemish co-producer of the documentary is Brussels-based production outfit Savage Film which recently scored an Oscar Nomination for Michaël R. Roskam's feature debut Bullhead.
Another Flemish co-production in Berlin is Nicole Van Kilsdonk's Taking Chances, which has been selected for Generation Kplus. Meanwhile Laura Zuallaert's short film Asparragos was picked for the Culinary Cinema section of the fest. The Berlinale screening of Anton Corbijn Inside Out on 17 February will also be the film’s World Premiere. Quirijns states that ‘she always tries to make films about people. Anton is a photographer, but I’ve approached him just as I would one of my characters, be it a weapons dealer, someone who wants to get dictators before a court or someone vying for peace. They are all people fighting a battle, with others, with a political system or as with Anton, with himself.’
Grimonprez lands Sundance development grant
The Shadow World, Johan Grimonprez’s latest documentary project, received a development grant from the Sundance Institute. According to Sundance, the grant is just the beginning for the lucky filmmakers who will receive year-round creative support from the prestigious organisation.
Filmmaker and creative artist Grimonprez impressed internationally with his award-winning Double Take which premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2009. His new docu feature, The Shadow World, explores the global arms industry: a business in which profits are calculated in the tens of millions of dollars, while losses are counted in human lives.
Docs from Flanders gain momentum
The Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) recently approved funding for 16 documentary projects. The list includes much anticipated projects such as The Land of the Enlightened, which was selected for the IDFA FORUM 2011, Sofie Benoot’s new docu Desert Cantos and Pierre Coulibeuf’s La beauté du Guerrier which was scripted by Jan Fabre. The number of documentary projects supported is another clear sign for the vibrancy of Docs from Flanders. The documentary quality doesn’t go unnoticed internationally, just last month an impressive total of 15 doc titles from Flanders got presented in several IDFA programmes.
An impressive total of 11 feature or average length documentaries are to receive production support. Brussels-based production outfit Savage Film can start planning production for two documentaries: Jeroen Van der Stock’s Japandoned (RIP Japan) and Pieter-Jan De Pue’s The Land of the Enlightened. Production outfit Sophimages is also working on two titles, namely Diane Perelstejn’s The Life & The Art van Kathleen Ferrier and Peter Woditsch’s In the Name of the Fater, ..., Confessions.
VAF Wildcards 2011 announced
The Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) has once again awarded five promising graduation filmmakers with a VAF Wildcard. This year’s winners are Kenneth Mercken’s The Letter and Adil El Arbi & Bilall Fallah’s Brothers in the fiction category, Kenneth Michiels’s Twenty-One + Seven and Jeremy De Ryckere’s The Heir for Documentary and Boris Sverlow’sShattered Past for Animation.
The VAF Wildcards are aimed at giving young filmmaking talent a chance to embark on a first professional project by providing a (starting) budget of €40,000 or €60,000, plus a professional coach. Now in its seventh edition, the VAF Wildcards have quickly become the most important awards in Flanders.
