SDI Blog from 2000 to 2019

Toronto's Hot Docs festival kicks off this week and, as ever, the programme is looking well... HOT! We're delighted to see that lots of exciting Scottish projects have made the cut! From features to shorts to industry events; Scotland is well represented by an eclectic mix of programming. Take a look!

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The IDFA 2018 programme is now live and there is so much to dig your teeth into! Here's a quick round up of all the Scottish films that will be screening at the festival. 

Heads up! Tickets are already available to book for Guests and Friends and the general ticket sale begins on Thursday November 1st.

Becoming Animal

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Rebecca Day recently attended the Getting Real conference in Los Angeles, run by the folks at the International Documentary Association. It’s a three-day event filled with international filmmakers, inspiring keynotes, presentations, workshops, and vital conversations around the most urgent issues facing the documentary community today.

As in past years, the main focus was the ever-increasing question of sustainability within the industry. This year transparency and creativity were added to the conversation, which made it the perfect environment to launch a much-needed discussion around the more vulnerable aspects of making documentaries. Rebecca went over there to host a panel discussion titled ‘Therapeutic Interventions in Documentaries’. Here she tells us a little more about how her work as a producer is merging with her new focus on mental health in the documentary sphere.

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As you may have heard, SDI's latest offering Freedom Fields is to have its World Premiere this Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival!

The film is the first feature from British/Libyan director Naziha Arebi, making it also the first feature documentary made by a Libyan female director! 

Here's a quick shout out to all the Arab films making waves and heading to TIFF this week!

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This is the final instalment of our guest blog from filmmaker Karen Guthrie, we hope you've found it enlightening! The self-distribution journey can be a challenging one but as Karen has pointed out the opportunities it affords can take you places you never expected. If more people taking distribution into their own hands means more great documentaries like The Closer We Get out there it can only be a good thing!

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In the penultimate instalment of the guest blog Karen Guthrie recalls her experiences of taking The Closer We Get to audiences far and wide. The preparation, the travel, the money (or lack thereof) and the unexpected moments that make it all worth while!

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In the second instalment of the blog Karen discusses the highs and lows she traversed after her film, The Closer We Get, moved on from the festival circuit. From distribution woes to the surprising benefits of crowdfunding Karen has great advice for all you indie doc-makers out there!

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Karen Guthrie’s The Closer We Get won Best International Feature Documentary at Hot Docs in 2015. Karen is writing this blog for SDI to provide an insight into elements of her filmmaking practice. However, it’s not the artistic side of things that this blog will focus on, but the arguably less glamorous, murky world of outreach and distribution. In this first edition of the blog, Karen describes how she was thrown, ill-prepared into that world, after she received an unexpected international phone call....

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With only days to go until the deadline for applications we thought we'd soothe your mind with a quickfire round of FAQs, here we go!

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