Interviews

It’s 44 years now since American preacher Jim Jones presided over the notorious mass-murder/suicide in which over 900 people died, most by taking poison, in a settlement in Guyana. Now, Czech director Jan Bušta has used the 1978 Jonestown massacre as the starting point for his radical new documentary, world premiering in Jihlava. The director explains talks to BDE.

Czech filmmaker Victor Portel tells Business Doc Europe about his new doc, screening in International and Czech Joy competitions, concerning Vladimir Dzuro, an ex-Prague detective turned International Criminal Tribunal investigator, whose painstaking research led to the arrest of a notorious war criminal from the former Yugoslavia.

US performance artist, writer and filmmaker Andrea Kleine talks to Business Doc Europe about her film in which she performs to an empty theatre, the same one she and her partner Bobby Previte holed up in during quarantine. “That was the crux of the film. How do you recreate that feeling of ‘live’ when nobody is there?” she muses.

In his film selected for International Competition, Mateo Ybarra returns to familiar ground as he examines Swiss army conscripts recording their drills and exercises, as well as their reflections on mandatory military service. “Far from being convinced by the relevance of such an institution and its functioning, the intertwining of civil and military society is…fascinating to me,” Ybarra tells BDE.

When Dr Adelheid Heftberger spoke to Business Doc Europe, it was just a few hours after her keynote speech last week at Leipzig’s DOK Archive market. “I wanted to explain a little bit the position of film archive in terms of access, and what happens in the background,” Heftberger [Head of Film Access, film dept of the German Bundesarchiv in Berlin] said of her address to the professional audience.

With over 1,300 film professionals in attendance every year, Ji.hlava IDFF is a key meeting place for the world doc industry, and the most important documentary hub in Central and Eastern Europe, even for US doccers. Head of Industry Jarmila Outratová guides Business Doc Europe though a programme jam-packed with new projects, the promotion of new production talent and a major market for CEE documentary output.

Festival boss Marek Hovorka talks to Business Doc Europe on the eve of the 26th Ji.hlava IDFF, which kicks off October 25, running through to October 30. Hovorka describes the leading Czech festival as “a documentary Woodstock.” It may now be 26-years-old but it still has the same freewheeling idealism that characterised the event when it was launched in 1997, he points out.

The three-way 90-minute co-pro The Jacket (Belgium, France, The Netherlands) places a fictional tale (that of a search for the titular theatre prop in the streets of Beirut) into a documentary setting, at the same time exploring the broader topic of living in exile. “In this quest, situations and encounters will be set up, but it is not my task to direct what Jamal or the other characters have to say,” says director Poppe.

Making one film is a challenge. Doing six at once is something that could easily drive even hardened and experienced producers to the verge of breakdown. Nonetheless, showrunners Vincent Coen and Guillaume Vandenberghe, together with producer Hanne Phlypo of Belgian outfit, Clin d’oeil films, are in the final stages of completing their epic series Draw For Change, which they discuss with BDE.

Gereon Wetzel and Melanie Liebheit’s kitchen-based documentary is satisfyingly unusual in its choice of subject. Whereas filmmakers generally focus on the head chef in a restaurant, theirs follows the apprentice chef Agnes, highly talented but very much at the bottom of the food chain. Wetzel and Liebheit serve up answers to Business Doc Europe.