“After the online edition of the 2020 festival, Cinéma du réel is now mobilising to support the diversity of writing, forms and ideas and give them resonance,” say festival organisers who are prepping for all options in the event of continued French/Paris lockdown. The competition selections will be announced on February 22.
“While the most fervent hope of the Cinéma du réel team is to see you all in the film theatres, [we] are also working on all possible options depending on the rules in force (total or partial lockdown, curfew or limited access to theatres) and will propose an adapted format that unites and enhances the festival,” continues the CdR statement, released this week.
This year’s festival dates are 12-21 March.
The Paris event adds how, “whatever the health situation, Cinéma du reel will be proposing a stroll through the fields of documentary cinema so that everyone can continue to cultivate their view of the world and what we are.”
In Official Competition, the International selection will include approximately 20 feature-length and short films which will receive their French premieres. Within the French selection, around 20 feature-length and short films will enjoy their world prems.
While competition selections won’t be revealed until February 22, the festival announced other details of the programme, which include a focus on the films of filmmaker/farm worker Pierre Creton. Creton is well known for his films A Beautiful Summer (2019) and Va, Toto! (2017), and all of his work is shaped and informed by a landscape that defines his existence both as artist and labourer.
An associated programme titled ‘Filmmakers in their Gardens’ focusses on seven other documentary visionaries who have chosen to live their lives – and ply their trades – in and among nature, turning their everyday setting into a garden for thoughts and concerns, for joys and the pain of living. The featured artists are Margaret Tait, Anne Charlotte Robertson, Joachim Pinto, Séance Rose Lowder, Jonas Mekas, Hilal Baydarov and Sophie Roger.
A series of themed debates called ‘Popular Front(s)’ will focus on our roles, and our effectiveness, as citizens. “At the heart of the debates [is] the idea of democracy, the decisions and commitment of everyone to help build society and drive its transformation,” outlines the festival statement. “This year’s programme focusses on…the role we agree to assume and the role we could seize. It questions how direct actions can influence the decisions of those who govern us, in order to defy fatalism and celebrate possible victories.”
In its ‘Festival Conversations’ strand, Cinéma du réel will seek to explore the relationship between literature and documentary cinema. “Building on the words of practitioners – those who make, those who create – this involves not only exploring the fictional vein of documentary writing, but also the way in which writing associates careful observation with a subjective point of view, and opens itself up to the existence of others.” Writers signed up include Maylis de Kerangal, Jean-Christophe Bailly and Pierre Bergounioux, while the documentarian cohort includes Claire Simon, Mariana Otero and Alice Diop.
On the professional side the 2021 ParisDOC Works-in-Progress (March 16-18) selection of eight new projects will be announced January 22. The programme is designed to actively support the distribution, promotion and placement of feature documentaries by linking, at a key stage of the production process, project holders (filmmakers and producers) to industry professionals.
Launched in 2014, ParisDOC offers a series of events designed to engage professionals, support their needs, and encourage meetings and networking.
The Works-in-Progress, the Public Forum, the Matinales, and the various round tables are conceived as occasions for dynamic exchange, with a view on development for the documentary cinema, from production to distribution.
“ParisDOC is also a professional video library in open access and four days of conviviality, a unique opportunity for French and international professionals to meet, exchange and launch new projects,” writes the festival.
