ReportWire

Tag: Idfa

  • ‘Soundtrack To A Coup D’Etat’ Director Johan Grimonprez Named Guest Of Honor At 2024 International Documentary Festival Amsterdam

    ‘Soundtrack To A Coup D’Etat’ Director Johan Grimonprez Named Guest Of Honor At 2024 International Documentary Festival Amsterdam

    [ad_1]

    Belgian artist and filmmaker Johan Grimonprez, whose latest documentary Soundtrack To a Coup D’Etat is expected to be an Oscar contender, has been named Guest of Honor at the upcoming International Documentary Festival Amsterdam.

    The honor recognizes a distinguished career that includes Blue Orchids, and his debut feature film, the 1997 documentary dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y. IDFA, which runs from Nov. 14-24, will be highlighting the filmmaker’s “uncompromising approach to challenging narratives and reinterpreting historical events through a critical, contemporary lens,” the festival said in a statement.

    ‘dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y‘

    Courtesy of IDFA

    “Grimonprez first gained international acclaim with his 1997 film dial H-I-S-T-O-R-Y, which examined the history of airplane hijackings and the media’s role in shaping public perception,” IDFA noted in a release. “His most recent award-winning film, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, unravels the decolonization of Congo, using jazz as a smokescreen and means of protest in the examination of the international context behind the 1961 murder of Congo’s prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. Other films screening will be Double Take (2009), Shadow World (2016), Blue Orchids (2017) and more. With this retrospective, IDFA invites audiences to discover and reflect on Grimonprez’s singular exploration into the development of present-day media, from how world crises are represented to our own relationships to these platforms and technologies.”

    'Soundtrack to a Coup D'Etat'

    ‘Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat’

    Courtesy IDFA

    Grimonprez will take part in an extensive discussion of his work, the centerpiece Talk of this year’s IDFA. As part of the honor, he will select 10 documentaries to be shown at IDFA.

    In addition to today’s Guest of Honor announcement, IDFA revealed programming details for the festival’s 37th edition, including new curated program Dead Angle, the dedicated Spotlight on Cuba, alongside live cinema section IDFA on Stage and new media program IDFA DocLab.. The final competition titles and full program will be announced on Tuesday, October 15, during the IDFA 2024 press conference — available to stream online at idfa.nl.

    Below are details on the program announcements:

    Dead Angle: Borders

    This edition, IDFA introduces the multi-year curated program Dead Angle. The program presents an ongoing exploration into our blind spots, both past and present—using documentary cinema as a torch to illuminate the dark corners of our awareness. This year’s program delves into the complex symbolism of borders, exploring them not just as physical barriers, but as profound metaphors for identity, community, and the human condition.

    'The Great Wall'

    ‘The Great Wall’

    Courtesy IDFA

    Among confirmed titles is The Great Wall by Tadhg O’Sullivan, an essay film that maps the borders around Europe in light of the migration crisis, based on a short story by Franz Kafka. In Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan, the Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers travel along the 1967 partition lines that divided Palestine, exploring how people evoke the frontiers that separate them from their neighbors. By reflecting on how documentary filmmakers approach these simple yet complex territorial perimeters, the program will invite the audiences and artists to engage in meaningful discussion and nurture critical awareness. The complete list of selected titles will be confirmed on October 15; these are the titles announced so far:

    • Would You Have Sex with an Arab?, directed by Yolande Zauberman
    • Respite, directed by Harun Farocki
    • Route 181, Fragments of a Journey in Palestine-Israel, directed by Michel Khleifi and Eyal Sivan
    • Black Harvest, directed by Bob Connolly, Robin Anderson
    • Infiltrators, directed by Khaled Jarrar
    • There Are So Many Things Still to Say, directed by Omar Amiralay
    • Jakub, directed by Jana Ševčíková
    • The Great Wall, directed by Tadhg O’Sullivan
    • The Diary of a Sky, directed by Lawrence Abu Hamdan

    Spotlight on Cuba

    In a dedicated program of nineteen films, Spotlight on Cuba will invite audiences and industry to revisit the complex political history of Cuba. With a retrospective of the pioneering Afro-Cuban filmmaker Sara Gómez, next to a special curation of films made by students of the EICTV (The International Film and TV School of San Antonio de los Baños, Cuba), the program will explore the paradoxes of our perception of Cuba as both revolutionary utopia and dystopia. The program also offers a glimpse into the ways these students exercise artistic freedom in one of the world’s most distinguished film schools. The nineteen titles that make up the program have been announced:

    • Guanabacoa: Crónicas de mi familia, directed by Sara Gómez
    • Isla, directed by Marcos Pimentel
    • Los viejos heraldos, directed by Luis Alejandro Yero
    • Isla del Tesoro, directed by Sara Gómez
    • Los niños lobo, directed by Otávio Almeida
    • Y… temenos sabor, directed by Sara Gómez
    • Si no puedo bailar, esta no es mi revolución, directed by Lillah Halla
    • Sobre horas extras y trabajo voluntario, directed by Sara Gómez
    • La despedida, directed by Alejandro Alonso Estrella
    • La bonita, directed by María del Mar Rosario
    • De bateyes, directed by Sara Gómez
    • Abecé, directed by Diana Montero
    • Una isla para Miguel, directed by Sara Gómez
    • Iré a Santiago, directed by Sara Gómez
    • El árbol, directed by Roya Eshraghi Safaifard
    • El enemigo, directed by Matias Aldemar
    • De cierta manera, directed by Sara Gómez
    • Indicios, del inscrito, directed by Rafael Ramírez
    • Mi aporte, directed by Sara Gómez

    IDFA on Stage

    With its most collaborative edition to date, the IDFA on Stage selection presents its boundary- breaking and interdisciplinary program of live cinema events. Bridging film, new media, and the performing arts, highlights include two projects presented together with IDFA DocLab—the innovative performance Thanks for Being Here by Belgian theater group Ontroerend Goed, presented together with De Brakke Grond, and live performance Drinking Brecht by New York and Istanbul-based artist Sister Sylvester that puts microbiology into the mix. The full program IDFA on Stage program will be announced in October.

    IDFA DocLab

    The 18th edition of IDFA’s pioneering new media program, IDFA DocLab, confirms the first titles set to premiere at an immersive documentary art exhibition, this year presented at De Brakke Grond, ARTIS-Planetarium, and the newly added location, Droog. These first announced titles are the works of the four winners of the Film Fund DocLab Interactive Grant, ranging from augmented reality apps to immersive installations. The full IDFA DocLab program selection will be announced in October.

    [ad_2]

    Matthew Carey

    Source link

  • MetFilm Acquires International Rights to Icelandic Crowd Pleaser ‘The Home Game’ (EXCLUSIVE)

    MetFilm Acquires International Rights to Icelandic Crowd Pleaser ‘The Home Game’ (EXCLUSIVE)

    [ad_1]

    MetFilm Sales has acquired worldwide rights, excluding Iceland, to Smari Gunn and Logi Sigursveinsson’s directorial debut “The Home Game,” which picked up the audience award at both Nordisk Panorama and the Icelandic Documentary Film Fest Skjaldborg.

    The film is set to have its North America Premiere at DOCNYC this week and the MetFilm team will be introducing it to buyers at IDFA.

    Twenty-five years ago, in a small fishing village in Iceland (population: 369), one man built a soccer field at the foot of a volcano, dreaming of a home game in the national FA Cup. The team was dealt an away fixture and lost 10-0. Nobody ever set foot on the home pitch. Twenty-five years later, a boy resurrects his father’s dream – to play a home game and lose by fewer than 10 goals.

    “The Home Game” is produced by Stephanie Thorpe, Heather Millard, Elfar Adalsteins and Freyja Kristinsdottir, and is a Silfurskjár and The Freezer production. The cast includes Kari Vidarsson, Vidar Gylfason, Freydis Bjarnadottir and Gunnar Orn Arnarson.

    “Smari and Logi have made an irresistible film that will bring warmth and joy to whomever sees it. It was great to watch this Icelandic gem catch fire at Nordisk Panorama and deservedly pick up the audience award. We are truly excited to be bringing it to the international market,” said Mitch Clare, international sales manager at MetFilm Sales.

    “The Home Game”

    “We are thrilled to team up with MetFilm on our international journey with ‘The Home Game.’ MetFilm Sales are the perfect collaborators with their understanding of this heartfelt underdog story and its universal appeal,” Thorpe said.

    MetFilm Sales’ slate also includes Swedish festival hit “The Gullspang Miracle,” directed by Maria Fredriksson, Edward Lovelace’s “Name Me Lawand” and “Riders on the Storm” from Red Bull Studios.

    [ad_2]

    Leo Barraclough

    Source link

  • Reservoir Docs Boards Mark Cousins Doc ‘A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things,’ Featuring Tilda Swinton (EXCLUSIVE)

    Reservoir Docs Boards Mark Cousins Doc ‘A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things,’ Featuring Tilda Swinton (EXCLUSIVE)

    [ad_1]

    Paris-based Reservoir Docs has acquired worldwide sales rights excluding Italy to “A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things,” a theatrical documentary by Scottish-Irish director Mark Cousins, featuring the voice of Tilda Swinton.

    The film, described by the producers as “visually ravishing,” explores the art of the 20th century Scottish painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham.

    Swinton will voice the artist’s innermost thoughts, reading from her private diaries and notebooks, which have never before been made public.

    The film is in late post-production for release in 2024. It is produced by Mary Bell and Adam Dawtrey for BofA Productions, and co-funded by the National Lottery via Screen Scotland, with the support of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust. I Wonder Pictures has acquired Italian rights from the producers.

    “A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things” is the story of an unusual creative brain, and a magnificent lifelong obsession. One day in May 1949, Barns-Graham, then 36 years old and an emerging figure in the modernist St. Ives group of artists, climbed the Grindelwald glacier in Switzerland. She experienced an aesthetic and spiritual epiphany which rewired her brain and transformed her art. She spent the rest of her life painting the glacier. Through a cinematic immersion into her art and life, the film explores themes of gender, neurodiversity, climate change, and the nature of creativity from youth to old age.

    Born in 1912, Barns-Graham died in 2004, creating vivid and dynamic new artworks right to the very end of her life.

    Wilhelmina Barns-Graham

    Cousins said: “At school I was passionate about both art and maths. My heroes were visual people who seemed to see geometry and engineering in their work – Orson Welles, Paul Cezanne, etc. In the early 90s I discovered another one of that tribe, Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, whose paintings analyzed glaciers like Cezanne’s analyzed mountains. Decades later, at the Barns-Graham Trust, I discovered how prolific she was, how unstoppable, and fell in love with her work in a new way. Her visual thinking, her wanderlust and her dynamism excited me. Add in her synaesthesia and the near disappearance of the Alpine glaciers and you’ve got a subject that’s perfect for cinema. I had to make this film. Barns-Graham’s work feels very contemporary to me.”

    Dawtrey said: “Mark is a phenomenon, without doubt the most prolifically successful U.K.-based filmmaker of the past decade, whose work has been lauded at more major festivals than any other, and sold extensively worldwide. All of this by staying true to his own unique artistic vision – just as Willie did with her paintings. That’s why they are an ideal match. We are delighted to work with Reservoir Docs to bring this perfect marriage to audiences around the world.”

    This is the fifth collaboration between Cousins and BofA, following “A Story of Children and Film” (2013), “Stockholm My Love” (2016), “The Eyes of Orson Welles” (2018) and “The Story of Looking” (2021).

    Mark Cousins

    Anaïs Clanet of Reservoir Docs negotiated the worldwide sales deal with BofA. Clanet will launch pre-sales at IDFA, after meeting the producers in Amsterdam two years ago, and pursuing the project ever since.

    She said: “Creation, cinema and quality, this is really what attracted us to the project almost two years ago now and I couldn’t be happier to share the film around the world. Mark is a wonderful filmmaker who has a beautiful insight into Wilhelmina’s creativity. It’s a film about the inventive and unusual creative process from an extraordinary artist who deserves to be more widely recognized. Mark has created a one-of-a-kind project that we can’t wait to sell worldwide.”

    The film is edited by Timo Langer, with an original score by Glasgow-based composer Linda Buckley, and animations by Danny Carr. Executive producer is Mark Thomas on behalf of Screen Scotland. Rob Airey of the Wilhelmina Barns-Graham Trust, based in Edinburgh, acted as consultant.

    In November 2022, Cousins staged a four-screen installation at Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh about Barns-Graham’s encounter with the Grindelwald glacier, titled “Like a Huge Scotland.” Extracts from this installation also feature in “A Sudden Glimpse to Deeper Things.” The intention is that the two works could tour globally together in suitable multi-arts venues, alongside exhibitions of Barns-Graham’s work.

    Other recent films by Cousins include “My Name Is Alfred Hitchcock,” “The March on Rome,” “The Story of Film: A New Generation” and “Women Make Film.” In 2020 he received the European Film Academy’s inaugural Innovation Award, and in 2022 he was given the Outstanding Contribution to Cinema Medal at the Telluride Film Festival.

    In 2023, he received the Persistence of Vision Award from the San Francisco Film Festival; the Maverick Award at the Dublin Intl Film Festival; the Outstanding Contribution to Film and Culture Award from the Ismailia Film Festival in Egypt; and the Honorary Heart of Sarajevo Award from the Sarajevo Film Festival in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the art of film.

    [ad_2]

    Leo Barraclough

    Source link