The online pitching competition really got people thinking about how to make a visually interesting taster for a film. One that leaves the audience with an understanding of the style and subject matter of the proposed film, and a thirst to watch more. However, it couldn’t merely be a trailer for a longer film. After a four-hour round table watching panel, we finally came up with a winner – A Patagonia Tale, about Egidio, a 70 year old patagonian gaucho.

Lucas Gordon and Santiago Burin des Roziers (joint directors) will be receiving £5,000 to buy a camera of their choice.

The beauty of this pitch is that after taking you into Egidio’s world, you really want to stay there and see more. By mounting the camera on the dog in the hunting scene you see the filmmakers have an idea of how to use motion to create excitement, to contrast with the stillness of everyday life. There is no visual trickery, this is just a very well-shot character study, which is simple and stunning.

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Tis the season to be making jolly little lists, that show what you like. All the bloggers do it now, to show what they consumed, and thoroughly enjoyed.

I’ve split my list into two though. The first part is for films that I skipped out of and spluttered with superlatives because they resonated on me with such an immediate level of captivation. The second list is for clever documentaries that I found utterly brilliant, especially as I thought about them afterwards. The two lists are obviously not binary; some films could have made it onto both, and other documentaries are nowhere to be seen, but I still carry them round in my thoughts. Anyways, here it is, docs I’ve loved from 2008’s offerings, with links to what I’ve written about them.

PART 1
1. Mechanical Love
2. Severing the Soul
3. Japan: A Story of Love and Hate
4. Man on a Wire
5. American Teen

PART 2
6. Solitary Life of Cranes
7. The Doctor who hears voices
8. The English Surgeon
9. My Winnipeg
10. The Shock Doctrine

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Last night I headed over to the Prince Charles cinema to catch a screening of Ivo Gormley’s new documentary, Us Now. It was a free but pre-registered event, that I had failed to sign up to in advance.

Normally I am very confident and able to talk/slip my way inside places, parties and performances that I’m not ticketed out for, and the bitingly cold air against my bare ears was further impetus. However, the whole topic of the documentary and night was people coming together via the internet to organise themselves, so it seemed crass to crash the system of entry. Whilst I waited I saw lots of people from active social activism activity, internet pioneers and documentary fans. Then I got in legitimately, and felt much more adult-like.

I did miss out on being included within the great intro, where the names and professions of the attendants who had registered where illustrated in tag clouds. Paul and Sarah were the most common names, and pictures of bloggers (social heroes!) in the audience appeared, making people turn to check out their neighbours, and transforming the cinema into a social space. read more

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Holly Ross is the director of A Anderton Presenting, which was one of the winners of the My Family and Other Animals theme that aired on Channel 4 earlier this year. I asked her about herself, and this is what she sent me. [Make sure you check out her v cute pop video I Like Birds But I Like Other Animals Too.]

I am a film maker from Lancaster, which is a little historical city in the north west of England. At the moment I work as a producer/director for ITV Border in Carlisle making regional programmes for them but what I enjoy most is thinking of ideas for short films that I can film in my spare time and then making them!

I really really love making documentaries. What I love about documentaries is finding passionate and interesting people with amazing stories and putting their story and perspective on life ‘down to tape’. There are a lot of people in the world who are worth recording and in my work I hope to open up the door to these people’s lives and let viewers stand on the door mat agog! For me, it’s all about finding great people with spectacular stories, or filming the mundane in a spectacular way. Someone once said I was like the ‘Diane Arbus’ of television. I went red at that cos I really really like Diane Arbus.

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Here’s the list of world competition docs included.

And taking a look at the list of shorts in the competition. Both Eva Weber’s Steel Homes , which just premiered at IDFA, and Finlay Pretsell & Adrian McDowall’s Ma Bar, which recently won a Scottish BAFTA for best short. Both films were made on the Bridging the Gap scheme earlier this year, so congrats!

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Please make sure you get a line from me saying I have recieved your application.  The junk filter is being slightly strange, especially when I have tried to move a few applications from the junk folder into the pitching folder.  So, if you have already sent your idea in, and didn’t recieve a confirmation line from me, please email again to both fourdocs@channel4.com AND rebecca.frankel@magiclantern.co.uk

Thank you

P.S. I saw an absolutely amazing short experimental art documentary yesterday called Severing the Soul.  Totally inspiring – will write more about it.

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We got lots of very high quality entries to the FourDocs bursary scheme.  After looking through the applications I was totally impressed with the dedication of people who get out there and actually make films, instead of talking about it.

Some people had been filming a subject for years, others became so obsessed with an idea they just had to make it, and another decided to make a personal investigation about their heritage into a film.  What we were looking for, as stated in the T’s & C’s, was strong visual ideas that stand a good chance of being selected at film festivals.  We had a difficult time with the judging, because there were so many deserving projects that £1,000 would really help elevate. In the end, we actually decided to give to out eight bursaries to films that were all fairly advanced (ie most of the filming had already happened), made by filmmakers with a broad range of backgrounds, including artists and an actor, as well as seasoned doc makers. read more

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Here is the Oscar shortlist for documentaries, as read off A J Schnack’s blog, All These Wonderful Things. I agree with Doc/Fest’s Hussain that the money is on Man on The Wire.

There is a great article about theatrical docs, with some insight from the producer, Simon Chinn, about why people flock to life-affirming, but won’t leave their houses for misery that doesn’t go anywhere.

And ironically enough, A J Schnack’s own documentary Kurt Cobain – About a Son is on True Stories on More 4, tonight at 10pm. He managed to secure many hours of audio interview between Kurt Cobain and the music journalist Michael Azerrad, and with it weaves us through Kurt’s life, from his own perspective and his own words. read more

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How to make a film using Sean McAllister’s tried and perfected method:

1. Head to a hostile environment to report on an important political issue
2. Brutally collide camera lens with your topic head on
3. Realise your subject is a victim sprawled open for examination, like a bug in a petri dish, divorced from the context of its being and devoid of individual detail
4. Become depressed and think you’re losing your way with no human narrative to grasp onto, as you drink and talk your frustrations through at night with a bar fixture
5. Leave, and almost give up on the facade of making a film, until you understand the one who propped you up with their near-immunity to the surrounding scenario is the one you must return to
6. Stake down your claim on this surviving social misfit whose eyes dance above a slouching spine, and attach yourself fast for the next 6 months
7. Question the basics until they laugh and reveal their seams
8. Spot the potential drama of their destiny, and divine it

Again, Sean McAllister has cast the most charismatic of characters, in another free-spirited hero, at odds with his society and expected role. Welcome to Naoki and the class of working poor in Japan. read more

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