Geoffrey Macnab

Elizabeth Klinck can justly be called one of the doyennes of the film archive world. She will be at DOK Leipzig for the inaugural edition of the DOK Archive Market, kicking off today, Oct 20, where she will also be chairing case studies and a masterclass. Before all that, she took time to expound on her life in the sector with BDE.  

The prolific Flemish doc producer Diplodokus attends CONNEXT with two series projects, the 4-part work-in-progress DNA, about the ongoing genetic revolution, and the completed 3-part series Catching the Pirate King which looks at how Belgian police became involved in the apprehension of leading Somalian pirates and helped put them on trial. Both series are co-directed by Maarten and Lennart Stuyck, who talks to BDE.

Jazz and Cold War politics are intimately entwined in Flemish director Johan Grimonprez’s latest doc feature, Soundtrack to a Coup d’Etat, a work-in-progress at CONNEXT. The film explores the circumstances which led to musicians Abbey Lincoln and Max Roach staging their own protest at the UN against the murder of Congolese leader, Patrice Lumumba. The director talks to BDE.

Flemish DJ and filmmaker Pascal Garnier remembers vividly the circumstances in which he first watched the Dutch-made 1986 music documentary Big Fun In The Big Town, which featured artists like Grandmaster Flash, LL Cool J and Run-DMC. As a teenager looking for his own “thing and identity,” he was strongly influenced by the film’s “direct and intimate view of what it was like in New York back then,” he tells BDE.

DOK Leipzig (17-23 October) is a festival for documentary…and for animated film. Ask artistic director Christoph Terhechte about his choice of opening film for the 65th edition and he suggests that the “animated” part of the proposition is sometimes overlooked. Hence the decision to go for Alain Ughetto’s animated feature No Dogs Or Italians Allowed in 2022.

Fernando Sulichin has been working with Oliver Stone for going on 20 years. He has enabled Stone to make documentaries about some of the most colourful and contentious figures in contemporary world politics. One of their latest collaborations, JFK Revisited: Through the Looking Glass, screened in Doclisboa a few days ago, where BDE caught up with the Argentinean-born maverick.

The stereotype of the climate activist is of an Extinction Rebellion-style protester, dressed like an old hippy, holding up the traffic in a busy city centre or blockading the petrol pumps. Roger Cox, the protagonist of Nic Balthazar’s new film Duty Of Care, screening online at CONNEXT 2022, is in a very different mould. The director explains how to Business Doc Europe.

Anne is a very strong swimmer who can hold her breath for three minutes and 40 seconds. When she is underwater, she feels happy and in control of her environment. But Anne also has Asperger’s Syndrome, and in everyday life, noise and commotion upset and distract her. She is the subject of Under The Surface, the feature work-in-progress by Guido Verelst, who talks to BDE.

Producer Hans Everaert of Menuetto Film discusses Manu Riche’s Carbon, a film about the influence of carbon fuel over the last 100 years of history in Europe and the Middle East. The film is based around three trips, to Italy and Iraq, and the third to Ukraine where Riche originally planned to film in coal mines and to talk about wars that have been fought over carbon. But then war intervened for real…

Irène is over 100 and will die one day soon. When that happens, what will become of her daughter Yvette, who is in her 60s and has a mental disability? This is the key question asked by Ellen Pollard’s film, co-directed with Marie De Hert and which is a Work in Progress project at the Antwerp-based CONNEXT platform. Pollard discusses the work with Business Doc Europe.