SDI Archives

SDI has been running very successful workshops in creative documentary storytelling from Edinburgh for the last seven years, however when we were invited by the British Council and the Bangladesh Documentary Council to train 16 inexperienced filmmakers and make four films in six days – that was definitely a challenge not to be turned down!

Many of us still go on assuming that creative documentary means “sleek aesthetics attached to an interesting topic.”  The type of workshops we run focus on the effective and creative structuring of a story in order to engage an audience.

We arrived in Dhaka via Dubai and after a shower we met our group (14 men and two women) as well as few local documentary filmmakers that same afternoon. We started the workshop by screening the Oscar nominated film Burma VJ.  It was very moving to see our new audience glued to the film. Burma shares a border with Bangladesh.