IDFA 2021

Leo Matchett and Michael Musante, co-founders (with American Zoetrope) of the LA-based non-profit Decentralized Pictures (DCP), explained during IDFA 2021 the rationale behind their ‘democratic’ film fund whose blockchain support of projects will be based on consensus approval among an online community of creatives, film fans, and industry professionals alike.

Jason is the third and final part of Maasja Ooms’ trilogy about the failing Dutch youth welfare services, in which the eponymous hero (and there really is something genuinely heroic about Jason) seeks to overcome systemic inadequacies, in the process transforming into an articulate advocate for reform. The documentary won Best Dutch Film at IDFA last week.

In her self-shot film, selected for IDFA Best of Fests, Cléo Cohen, a granddaughter of Jewish Arabs form Tunisia and Algeria, is determined to discover her identity. She spoke to Business Doc Europe about the emotional and evocative journey that results, as well as colonization and the essential business (at least from her grandmothers’ perspective) of straightening her very curly hair…

Newly available on discovery+, and coming hot on the heels of its Best of Fests screening at IDFA, is Scott Gawlik’s feature doc Set!, about the competitive world of table setting, in which the perfectionism of the participants is no different from that of an artist or even a filmmaker like Gawlik himself, he tells Business Doc Europe.

Veteran Danish filmmaker Jon Bang Carlsen was in Amsterdam last week for the international premiere in Masters section of his deeply personal film The Banality Of Grief, in which he reflects on the recent death of his beloved wife, Madeleine.

The third and most prescient of director Peter Nicks’ trilogy of vérité portraits of life in Oakland, California, Homeroom is a film that is, in equal part, impressive, immersive and insightful, and made with real compassion and respect.

Charting the odyssey taken by Greek marble as it is shipped to China, sculpted into objets d’art and then transported back to Greece, only to be bought by Chinese tourists, the doc is gently ironic and eminently watchable, and blessed with a satisfyingly light touch.

In 1969, Harlem hosted the so-called ‘Black Woodstock’, a series of weekend events during which an astonishing array of talent, from Stevie Wonder to Gladys Knight to Nina Simone to Sly and the Family Stone wowed hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers. Footage of the event remained in a vault until it was liberated and transformed into the Searchlight/Hulu feature doc by Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson, who gets down with BDE.

The name stays the same but there is a shift in emphasis at German sales outfit Deckert Distribution, with Liselot Verbrugge taking over as CEO. She will take a 50 per cent share in the company together with Heino Deckert who will now be concentrating on production, but will be on hand within an advisory capacity. Verbrugge explains the new set-up to Business Doc Europe.

Following on from the acquisition this week of Renate Raman and Joren Slaets’ Yaren and the Sun by New York Times Op Docs, VAF documentary maestro Marie Van Innis fills in Business Doc Europe on the boom in Flemish docs. And there’s a lot more to come, she underlines…