SDI Blog from 2000 to 2019

Roxana Vilk is producer of the POETS IN PROTEST series made by SDI Productions for Al Jazeera English. She's also the director of the episode on Manal al Sheikh: Fire Won't Eat Me Up.

I was really keen that we have an Iraqi poet in the Poets in Protest series. When I was reading Manal al Sheikh’s fiery work, I was immediately captivated, as she seemed to truly encapsulate the essence of a poet and activist combined.

As Manal herself says, “when you are a person from a country like Iraq you automatically have some anger inside you – and this anger, if you are a poet or a writer, you can transfer it as an explosion in your text.”

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Yasmin Fedda is the director of Hala Mohammad: Waiting for Spring, a documentary as part of the POETS IN PROTEST series, made by SDI Productions for Al Jazeera English. 

I have been visiting Syria all of my life, and when the uprising began I felt hopeful that much-needed change would come to the country. However, as time goes on, and more people are killed, it becomes a more and more painful struggle. At the same time, it has been inspiring to see and read about the artistic work and courage of protesters in Syria.

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Isabel Moura Mendes is Director of the Africa in Motion Film Festival. She previewed POETS OF PROTEST, a documentary series made by SDI Productions for Al Jazeera English starting this Friday, 31 August.

As a person who is very much involved in the championing of African film for its brilliance and artistic merit, but is also aware of its value as a powerful medium towards global understanding, the Poets of Protest series both inspires me and fills me with hope. 

From Dec 2010, like many other people across the world, I followed the unravelling of events in the Arab World (North Africa and the Middle East) through a 'mediatised' Western eye.

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The Scottish Documentary Institute was approached eight weeks ago to produce three short films for the Edinburgh International Culture Summit happening at the Scottish Parliament this week. Ministers and cultural policy makers from around the world are discussing how art and culture can build bridges between nations. You'll be able to find the archived video of their sessions here.

We produced one doc, one animation, and one drama – each of these five-minute films were screened at the beginning of one session.

The pressure to deliver films in response to the ambitious brief of the summit, in very short time, and of course on tight budget was tremendous. The conditions of production could not have been worse...

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While most of us on Sunday were caught up in the frenzy of the first weekend of the Olympics, one of our documentary champions was quietly fading away. Funny enough, his first film, Olympia 52, was a documentary about the 1952 Helsinki Summer Olympics.

He died as he lived, discreetly. Hard to find more than ten photos of him (he often responded to that request with a photo of his cat), even fewer interviews, a few photographic exhibitions – but a world legacy of 52 films which hit the poetical core of humanity in this world.

French filmmaker Chris Marker, better known for La Jetee, is at the origin of the essay film, a form pitched between documentary and personal reflection, exploring the subjectivity of the cinematic perspective.

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Last October I wrote about my experience filming in Maputo. The film is now finished and ready to be distributed. It will be premiered in Maputo in September at the Dockanema festival, in presence of the characters who took part in the film. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to be there. I would have loved to watch them  watching themselves, and see if the meaning I tried to create out of their different stories means the same to them and to the local audience.

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Paul Fegan's short documentary Pouters is one of the latest Bridging the Gap films, premiering this week. Here are his thoughts on the process.

Pouters is my first short film and has opened up new worlds for me. From the open wasteland of Cranhill, Glasgow to the pages of Darwin's 'Origin of Species' in search of the world behind the Pouter pigeon.

Over the past 9 months, I've been submerged in making what will be Scotland's premier film on one of the country's oldest and little known sports: Doo Fleein'. 40 hours of footage later, countless directional changes as characters came and went and pigeons were won and lost...

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Chico Pereira's short documentary Polaris is one of the latest Bridging the Gap films, premiering this week. Here's his account of how it was conceived...

Remember, you’re just a fecking bar tender
–said the drunken plasterer.

Apparently when someone says in LA that he is an actor, the other person asks him in which restaurant…

These days, life appears to me full of bridges and gaps, and I find myself jumping over water puddles more often than I would like… One of the main reasons for entering Bridging the Gap was exactly that: to walk the bridge that separates the life of a mature student (point A) from the dream of becoming a professional director (point B). Curiously, point A has vanished from sight, even though I haven’t moved. I extended my school time as much as I could; I became part of the furniture, but in the end, I got termites, and they made a bonfire out of me in the courtyard…

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Graffiti, a short film made as part of the Tripoli Stories at our workshop with the British Council in Libya, is premiering at the Sheffield Doc/Fest. Here's the making-of, written by co-director Ibrahim El Mayet.

It's day two of our week-long documentary film making workshop at the British Council in Tripoli; drawing inspiration from the previous day’s sessions with the professional film makers from the Scottish Documentary Institute, we were tasked with creating our own short documentary films.

The subjects had been selected from the previous afternoon's brain storming session and we were divided into teams with a director, director of photography (DOP), sound recordist, and editor. Our editors were whisked away to learn the basics of Final Cut Pro editing software while the rest of the team prepared to set off to research our three respective subjects: Tripoli museum, local fishermen and revolutionary flag makers.

Having been assigned the job of sound man on the flag project I was given a crash course in operating the sound equipment and radio mics, introduced to the concept of 'sound design', and tasked with collecting sounds. What we hear in film is just as important as what we see on screen the clinking of a tea cup, the rustling of a flag, the sound of the environment or 'atmo' sound such as passing traffic or the dull buzz of a fridge (which is often only noticed in its absence) must all be recorded and used to create a natural ambiance.

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