All about creative documentary

  • Diaries from a Sahrawi tent (1): Recalling two weeks in hell

    Posted by · February 20, 2012 3:47 PM

    The Scottish Documentary Institute has been commissioned by Aljazeera to make a six-part series on Poets in Protest. One of them is on the Sahrawi poetess Khadra who happens to be an old lady living in exile in one of the Polisario Camps in the middle of Sahara.

    Map: Wikimedia (Creative Commons)For those of you who do not know about the Sahrawi cause, these citizens of Western Sahara not only got colonised by the Spanish many moons ago. Once they managed to become independent, the Morrocans moved on their territory, pushed them out, and build a 3,000km wall around it. They also planted over 8 million land mines to make sure that the Sahrawi will not cross back into their land. Algeria gave the Sahrawi liberation movement, the Polisario Front, refuge on its territory and set up several camps for people to live – and so they have for the last 35 years. The war has moved into diplomacy rather than military and therefore they now live peacefully in those camps but In a state of complete dependence on international aid.

    With Roxana Vilk, the producer of the series, we decided that Al Khadra will be the perfect example of grassroot poetry. She uses words instead of bullets in order to express her anger at Morocco's invasion. 

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  • Lessons from Denmark

    Posted by · February 15, 2012 12:57 PM

    Photo: Per Palmkvist Knudsen (Creative Commons)Over the last few years the Scottish Documentary Institute has been cultivating close ties with Denmark, and the more we work with them the more we are envious of their system. While we go on and on talking about the politics of financing film and TV, Denmark has become one of the major European players in film – and it has a population similar to Scotland. How come?

    For the first half of this year, Denmark is taking over the presidency of the EU, and to celebrate it, once again it is film that is being pushed. Danish embassies are organising screenings of some of their films all around Europe.

    In UK we keep on asking: Why does a country need to spend people's tax in order to subsidise films? Why can't cinema take care of itself?

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  • Why we should build our own nations

    Posted by · February 14, 2012 9:12 AM

    Although this headline may sound like it, this is not really a post about the independence debate in Scotland. It's more about what independent filmmakers can learn from politicians when it comes to nation-building.

    I explained in my previous post about the Virtuous Circle why it's particularly important for documentary producers to take their audience with them across projects, rather than starting from scratch with every film. 

    In tech speak, we want a toolkit that combines Customer Relationship Management (i.e. your audience) with a Content Management System (i.e. your films, each on a dedicated website) – and fully integrates with event management, fundraising and social media. 

    It was during last year's election campaign of the pro-independence Scottish National Party that I first came across powerful software called NationBuilder, geared towards political use but flexible enough to be used for all sorts of campaigns, including outreach to those niche audiences of documentary films...

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  • Amy is blogging!

    Posted by · February 13, 2012 4:59 PM

    Amy HardieJust a quick note to say that Amy Hardie, acclaimed director of The Edge of Dreaming and Head of Research at the Scottish Documentary Institute, has started blogging at Amy on the Edge.

    Her latest post is on why impartiality is not the right aim for her.

    We recommend that you sign up for updates from amyhardie.com, as Amy has some very exciting projects coming up!

  • Berlin, minus nine

    Posted by · February 09, 2012 3:27 PM

    lou_Talis_snow_view_sm.jpg

    (Part of Lou's diary from Berlin.)

    One day from the Berlinale now and the sadism in the air has condensed into snow.

    People walk around pretending its ok – but I know better.

    Here's three of them as seen from the window of ex-ECA classmate and Bridging the Gap film-maker, Tali. Notice how these three lunatics have left their houses to promenade through the polar-powder, jauntilly and purposefully and, in some cases, pouting to whistle bravely like nothings wrong at all. Unfortunately the man with the hat on the corner had been in mid-stride for 3 hours. That's where bravado gets you.

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  • Berlin, minus 18

    Posted by · February 07, 2012 4:18 PM

    (Part of Lou's diary from Berlin.)

    Having finished my copy of Stasiland I now feel ready for a stay with my ex-ECA film making buddies Tali and Johanna in East Berlin. I am hugely excited about the Berlinale Talent Campus. Guest speakers include Kossakovsky, Juliette Binoche, Herzog and Mike Leigh. And the company of 300 other 'New Talents', from all walks of the film making. For what it's worth, I'll also be spilling the beans on new films at the Berlinale.

    7th Feb 2012

    On arrival in Berlin the moisture in my nose freezes on the short one minute walk to the airport station. An odd sensation, like having badly mixed concrete in the nostrils.

    It is -18 degrees. Some say -22. The numbing cold rises rapidly up from feet to stomach. It is too cold to remove my hands from their pockets to hold the map I should be following. Better lost and moving than still and searching. My mind jumps to the lesson of Oates, the bloke who travelled with legendary 'Scott of the Antarctic'. Childhood stories say he insisted on letting the cold kill him whilst walking into the Wilderess, rather than dying standing still. Now I understand. I understand Oates. While there is movement there is hope.

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  • Going in Circles

    Posted by · February 06, 2012 1:28 PM

    wired_cover.jpgIt was 1997 in a Wired magazine when Nic Wistreich first read about "virtuous circles". In an article about the "New Rules for the New Economy", Kevin Kelly had come up with this law:

    "In networks, we find self-reinforcing virtuous circles. Each additional member increases the network's value, which in turn attracts more members, which in turn increases value, and so on, in a spiral of benefits."

    This is what Kelly's circles looked like at the time:

    wired_graphic.jpg

    Yet it would take another 14 years for this concept to appear in documentary production.

    Fast forward to 2011, and Nic Wistreich has become the tech consultant on an audience engagement project of the Scottish Documentary Institute, aptly named the Virtuous Circle. What is it all about?

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  • Rabat Stories

    Posted by · January 25, 2012 12:51 PM

    PICT0006.jpgOnce again we were asked by the British Council to run a documentary workshop, this time, destination: Rabat (Morocco). 

    The deal is to teach creative documentary skills to 16 young filmmakers in 7 days and get them to make 4x3' films for international distribution. The stakes are high as the last set of films Dhaka Stories is doing extremely well, having been premiered in Sheffield in November 2010.

    We always start with the screening of examples of docs exploring what do we mean by creative documentary, how do we prioritise emotions over information? How do we construct, dramatise those emotions keeping to the truth of the character? What do we mean by reconstruction when we are talking about metaphoric images?

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  • Don’t try to make a Cow into a Camel!

    Posted by · December 22, 2011 11:52 AM

    Last week we had the pleasure of screening the Scottish premiere of The Woman with The 5 Elephants at Edinburgh College of Art, with a long Q&A by director Vadim Jendreyko.

    85-year-old Svetlana Geier dedicated her life to language. Considered the greatest translator of Russian literature into German, Svetlana has just concluded her magnum opus, completing new translations of Dostoyevsky’s five great novels—known as “the five elephants.” 

    As a precocious teenager living in Ukraine with an unusual facility for languages, Svetlana was brought to the attention of her country’s Nazi occupiers during World War II, and found uneasy refuge translating for them. She fled in 1943 and never returned … until now.

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  • Stay the Same

    Posted by · December 12, 2011 12:51 PM

    Stay the Same is an experimental film project by Sam Firth funded by the UK Film Council and Creative Scotland. Sam is filming herself every day at exactly the same time in exactly the same place for a year where she lives on Knoydart, a remote Scottish peninsular only accessible by boat. The project is about our relationship with time, nature, and place.

    This blog is a record of the process, a collection of related work, and responses to the project from friends, family, other artists and filmmakers. A shared insight into our perceptions of time and modern living.

    If you would like to submit a response please see the invite below.

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