Interviews

The new documentary chronicles the protests, sit-ins and strikes of workers in southern Spain as they face up to the prospect that they might be laid off. When she began filming, director Rodríguez made it clear to the strikers that she wasn’t a journalist working on a piece of reportage. She was a documentary maker making a film about the “convulsive changes” of the late industrial era, she tells BDE.

The new feature documentary Fire In The Mud unfolds in Unal, a rice producing village in Guinea-Bissau where the elders still have strong memories of the colonial war, lasting from 1963 to1974, in which the country fought for its independence from Portugal. But for the village’s youth, matters are somewhat different. “To them, the war was like a narrative from the past, like a fairy tale, a violent one, but really lost in the past,” Barroca tells BDE.

Prolific Canadian filmmaker Olivier Godin’s documentary shows visual artist and choreographer Adam Kinner and his dancers at work recreating the 1957 ballet work Suite Canadienne. “I had never done a documentary before. I thought, OK, let’s try things,” Godin tells BDE of his freewheeling approach to the task. It helped that Kinner gave the director ‘carte blanche’ to approach the film in any way he saw fit.

UK doccer Marc Isaacs talks to Business Doc Europe about his multi-layered new film set in the sleepy British town of Thaxted. It’s a film that involves ghosts and Morris dancing and a Chinese filmmaker visiting the town to find to the subject of her next film. “I was already thinking about Englishness, mythology and the way that the country over the last few years has desperately been trying to solidify some sense of itself,” Isaacs reflects.

Flemish production company Panenka’s 6-part series promises to lift the lid on the highly secretive workings within the higher echelons of the Catholic Church. “Despite our skeptical attitude, we knew that if we wanted to hear the voices of high-ranking clerics then we needed to adopt an open yet firm attitude, otherwise they would never talk,” series co-writer Jo Badisco explains to Business Doc Europe.

Fest director Miguel Ribeiro talks to Business Doc Europe about the upcoming edition of Doclisboa which presents 250 films from 42 countries, including 35 world premieres and 39 Portuguese films. “We see documentary as a way to employ the tools of cinema to take us on a quest of discovery. And for this, you need to have freedom for production, and freedom to think, to question and to reflect.” The festival opens October 19 with Wang Bing's Man in Black and closes with Leonor Teles’ Baan.

In his new film The Pigeon Tunnel (in cinemas and on Apple TV globally from October 20th), renowned documentary maker Errol Morris explores the life and work of writer John Le Carré, author of such classic espionage novels as The Spy Who Came In From The Cold, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy and Smiley’s People. “[I] could have gone on forever with this guy,” the Oscar-winning Morris tells Business Doc Europe.

The feature documentary Ana + kek tells a very personal story, about twin sisters whose beliefs have taken them on very different paths. “I felt I was too close to the subject,” says Zohra Benhammou of why she turned to Romy Mana to co-direct the film. “I needed someone who [could] take a distance [from it], to guide me into the story.”

The Flanders Audiovisual Fund (VAF) toppers talked to Business Doc Europe about the effectiveness of CONNEXT and about the need for an increase in core investment in the documentary sector. Yes, Flemish doccers may be “punching above their weight” in delivering great content despite low funding levels, “but that's the kind of argument we don't use towards politicians, because then they say you have enough money,” VAF CEO Koen van Bockstal insists.

Not every film about three generations of an Antwerp family can boast artistic cameos (at least in photo form) by the likes of Paul McCartney, Tina Turner, Mick Jagger and Edith Piaf. But this is no ordinary family. Flemish director Aldine Reinink presents an intimate and moving portrait of the Antwerp-based photographic Selleslags dynasty, at the heart of which is Herman (father to Jan and son of Rik) whose pictures have chronicled more vividly than most the golden era of late 20th Century pop culture.