Interviews

Archive is in the frame at Sunny Side 2023 with two Industry sessions Wednesday June 21. The first session introduces three new sector organisations that have launched in France, Germany and Spain over the past 12 months, while the second session is set to address archives and innovation. Both are moderated by archive producer & copyright clearance specialist Elizabeth Klinck. “There's a real need for archive producers, people who understand the process artistically, financially and logistically,” she tells BDE.

“I knew that he was funny going into it, but I didn’t realise how funny,” producer-director Stuart McClave tells BDE of the wisecracking Richard Williams, father of Venus and Serena and the subject of the new feature documentary On The Line: The Richard Williams Story (which had its UK premiere at Sheffield Doc Fest over the weekend following its Tribeca premiere).

Get back, hands off, go for it! Producer Simon Halfon discusses his new feature length doc about the great 1980s band Wham, which featured 'young guns' George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley. As soon as he pitched his idea, Halfon knew the film was a goer. “Within a heartbeat, we had this dream team of Chris Smith, John Battsek and Kate Townsend (Netflix),” he says.

At Sheffield 2023 Business Doc Europe sat down with Kim Christiansen of DR Sales. DR Sales is the international sales department of the Danish public broadcaster and one of the leading Nordic distributors of high-end audiovisual productions – in particular, the team focuses on award-winning documentaries, drama series and children’s content.

In 2020, poet, author and academic Helen Mort made a deeply troubling discovery. A friend alerted her to the fact that there were explicit photos of her on a porn site. Someone had stolen her images from social media and had used deepfake technology to superimpose her face onto bodies of other women. “With this film, the creative approach is completely in response to the ethical challenges,” director Morris says of her approach to telling Helen’s story.

In Misho Antadze’s short documentary Metabolism, selected for Sheffield, robots have taken over some of the functions we inexorably associate with human beings, such as milking cows and waiting on tables. “The observational documentary work that I make, it's mostly because I'm curious. I want to see these things, so making these films is a way of taking a look for myself and obviously to bring the audience with me as well,” Antadze says.

Prolific Scottish producer Sonja Henrici, who will be deliberating over docs in First Film Competition in 2023, discusses her slate of new films and projects, which include Finlay Pretsell’s upcoming Douglas Gordon: Self Divided, about the maverick Turner Prize winning Scottish artist, and a brace of films on mental health, one of which, Amy Hardie’s film Untitled Love Story, had a rough cut screening earlier this week in Sheffield.

In Melanie Manchot’s feature debut, a recovering alcohol and substance addict re-enacts moments from his own chaotic past life as he takes on the acting role of historical embezzler Thomas Goudie, whose public arrest in 1901 was reconstructed on celluloid (BFI Archive). Part observational doc and part fiction, all the support roles in STEPHEN are played by former or recovering addicts. “The shoot was probably the best three and a half weeks of my life,” Manchot tells BDE. “And I think for most of the cast as well.”

At Sheffield 2023 Business Doc Europe spoke with Irena Taskovski, CEO and founder of Taskovski Films, a production and sales outfit based in London and currently celebrating its 20th year of activity. The company CEO described her journey so far, and shared insights into her current editorial policy and approach to the business of doc.

“I had been making a series about the National Trust in England and got tired of being lied to, and I thought I would go and make a series in Russia about the oligarchs,” filmmaker Patrick Forbes remembers the unlikely sequence of events more than two decades ago which led to his first meeting with Novaya Gazeta editor Dmitry Muratov for the first time.