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Hi everyone, delighted to have been asked to contribute to the blog here on North East Movies. I'm the Marketplace and Industry Producer at Sheffield Doc/Fest, the UK's biggest documentary festival - and, we like to think, the most interesting and innovative documentary festival in Europe. Being the Industry and Marketplace person means that I deal with everything at the festival where people are pitching for money from funders, and also everything which involves getting commissioners and funders over to the festival and making sure that they feel comfortable enough at the festival to give out all their hidden pots of cash.

Well, that's the basic idea anyway. What I love about the job the most is helping filmmakers to develop their ideas and find ways to get them exposed on the biggest stages possible. As you'll see by my biog, I used to be at FourDocs and finding new platforms for documentary remains a massive passion for me - we're in a place at the moment where documentary and all independent film could really thrive if the potential of  the internet for showcasing film and video is used to its full potential, but like all technology innovations, it can be squandered and quickly drained of its utopian possibilities if brilliant creative people don't seize that potential.

Anyway enough waffle from me, and onto some films. As you might expect, I started first looking at the factual films on here. Now I'm a real old-fashioned man when it comes to documentary, despite my desire for new technology, and I love observational docs without voiceover and unnecessary musical accompaniment. So strange as it may seem considering it's way too long, I was very drawn to Artperson 28.10.07 which had a Warholian charm to it, especially with the almost-indecipherable grunting of the man behind the camera. I'm not totally sure what the filmmakers' intentions were, but this really worked for me as a raw slice of barely-mediated factual video.

And it also made you very aware of where this film came from geographically, which is what I'd also say about Joe, a lovely very-short film from Middlesbrough. This doc really showed you can engage a viewer in a good character in a tiny amount of time, and leave a lasting impression. Making a good doc isn't tricky when you have the basic elements of good character and narrative and this did - it's the same for one minute or one hundred. You don't need to have a thumping soundtrack or invent false situations for real people to go through - just find someone and something really interesting and make a movie.

I'll be back soon with reviews of more (maybe even non-factual) films really soon...

August 11 2008

Recommended This Week

Artperson 28.10.07 (21:04)
watch the development of artperson at the musical...

 

Joe (01:30)
A town is more than buildings. The people that...

 

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