Sadly, the time has come for FourDocs to draw to a close. Although we’re very proud of the things that FourDocs has achieved, we also feel that it’s time to find other new ways of identifying and championing new documentary talent.

FourDocs was set up in 2005 to provide a platform for new filmmakers to showcase their own short documentaries, receive feedback from leading industry experts and discuss them with each other. The site functioned as an online film school, with video guides covering everything from structure and lighting to editing choices. The archive timeline contextualised 30 or so definitive documentaries, such as Listen to Britain, The Lift and The Boy Who’s Skin Fell Off, and perhaps most inspirational were the interviews with award winning directors like Molly Dineen and Paul Watson.

We’ve had nearly 900 film submissions over the years, and seen 24 of them commissioned to be broadcast as 3 Minute Wonders. We also won a BAFTA for interactive innovation in 2007.

Four years is a long time online and things have changed dramatically. Video sharing enabled by sites like YouTube and Vimeo, and online community sites like Facebook and MySpace have changed what we do online. When Fourdocs launched there weren’t many ways of getting your video seen. There are now hundreds of ways filmmakers can upload, showcase, comment on and create communities around their work.

Although we will no longer be accepting video submissions on FourDocs, the site will stay up so you can still watch the guides, archive films and a curated choice of user films. On the blog roll I have also pointed you in the direction of some documentary blogs to keep you informed.

We’d like to thank everyone who’s participated in Fourdocs over the years, from its founding fathers Peter Dale, Anthony Lilley and Patrick Uden, and its Editors – before me, Charlie Phillips and Emily Renshaw-Smith. Most importantly we’d like to thank you, the people who watch, comment on and submit films. FourDocs would not have become such a fruitful entity without you.

FourDocs was a special project that raised the bar of what was acceptable as a piece of low-fi factual filmmaking. You don’t need loads of money, but you do need a plan and style that compliments the subject. I hope the filmmakers who got theirs reviewed and streamed feel like they gained something from the experience.

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.

Born and bred in the beautiful Andes mountains, Egidio works the land every day with no more than his bare hands. Isolated for periods of up to three months due to the harsh weather conditions, he is perfectly adapted to survive. High mountains, deep rivers and lack of roads isolate him, making human contact a rare occasion. Egidio lives out of his cattle, chicken and sometimes even has to hunt wild boar, pumas or deer for a meal. A heartwarming man of few words, Egidio was born to live this way. He is one of a kind.

The five other shortlisted pitches varied in style, involving animation, still photos and poetic scenes. They were:

• Daniel Edelstyn’s How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire
• Colin Dewar’s Sphere of Influence
• Clarrie Pope’s Absolute Woman
• David O’Hara’s Steel Town
• Richard DeDomenici’s Cross Rail

You can watch these in the Passat Pitching section of watch films.

Do you think we choose the best pitch? Which one would you choose to develop into a longer film?

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

What have you guys enjoyed, hated or been inspired by? Think theatrical, television and festivals, as well as your fave FourDocs ever.

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. (For more on this concept check out Lance Weiler). This was orchestrated by NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, who were hosting the night to launch their new Web Connect strand, to commission, produce and champion projects which show how the web is making an impact on business, society and culture.

Us Now is an optimistic documentary about how harnessing the power of the Internet for mass collaboration can potentially change society and power distribution. It examines forms of behaviour where people organise themselves – by voting how to distribute money within a local community, picking the players’ positions in a real football team, or lending money to particular people at low interest rates. The most commonly known example, and the one the film introduces us to the concepts through, is couchsurfing.com. Rather than a small company, with only seven employees, it’s actually a huge, self-policing organisation, which facilitates 1,500 people meeting and sleeping at each others’ houses, every night. This is a potent example to demonstrate the notion of trust as a way to protect yourself instead of hiding behind rules of entry, seeing as you literally let people into your living room.

The documentary weaves together lots of key thinkers on the power of the web, pushing the implication that people feel a sense of satisfaction when they are actually, rather than symbolically, involved in decision-making processes. (This insight was also quoted to me emphatically by Matt Hansen, who’s open source film project, A Swarm of Angels, works on the principle that paying to sign up and vote on scripting and casting matters actually brings such a sense of involvement that it should be seen as a form of entertainment, and therefore justifies the subscription fee.)

Many exciting new web innovations are adapted from the creations of coders and activists devising ways to allow better access of information in the public domain, to be used towards campaigning for change outside of the official systems created by hierarchical power structures. This often starts by building or adapting an online arena where knowledge can be logged and accessed in a collaborative way. A simple example is a forum, or a place to report problems in your borough, which must then be publicly seen to be investigated.

This is a Foucaldian take on the world [power-knowledge-discourse] that appeals to liberals who want to embrace the future and the untold possibilities of connecting with individuals of the world at large. Or, to recap for cynics, superficial meetings – like from dating sites – are only the start, and truly participatory governing methodologies are the future. It’s a very informative film, which manages to weave a lot of information and speakers together in a coherent, well-paced way, and is worth checking out if you still don’t quite get what the implications of social networking and information sharing may be.

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.

I also write and play music too. I am in a band called The Lovely Eggs. We have a record out at the moment called ‘I Like Birds But I Like Other Animals Too’ on Filthy Little Angels Records, and we have played in some nice places like in Amsterdam and New York and on a steam train. I sing and play guitar and sometimes I write the music for the documentaries I make. I am going to America soon for 5 weeks and I am driving all the way down Route 66. I hope to make a film about it. I hope to makes films about lots of other things. I have too many ideas and not enough time. I am hoping my film being shown on 3MW might open a few doors for me that I might want to walk through because I am passionate about this and really want to make it as a film maker. xx

]]> http://blogs.channel4.com/fourdocs/2008/12/09/holly-ross-film-and-pop-video-button-cute/feed/ 2 http://blogs.channel4.com/fourdocs/2008/12/04/sundance-line-up-unveiled/ http://blogs.channel4.com/fourdocs/2008/12/04/sundance-line-up-unveiled/#comments Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:22:33 +0000 Rebecca Frankel http://blogs.channel4.com/fourdocs/?p=343 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!

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.

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. The winners are:

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. The visuals are footage from the three major cities in Kurt’s life – Aberdeen, Olympia and Seattle, haunting precisely because they lack the man you are imagining. The film is reminiscent of Chris Marker’s San Soleil and Saint Etienne’s psychogeographical films, all very artfully crafted, with acute attention to sound.

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.

Japan: A Story of Love and Hate was difficult to make, as the confessional and controversial jogging journey dialogue at the start lays testimony to. Misunderstood, misdirected and mistreating his own health, Sean saw the unrealistic expectations for social face, warped work ethics and high suicide statistics, yet was locked out of the society and could not access any emotional theme; he was running in circles with no viable entry to the core for years. The breakthrough was Naoki, an ex-bar owner, an ex-home owner, an ex-brand-new-BMW-paid-in-cash-in-full owner, with ex-wives, and no conceivable assets or family of his own any more. Naoki was living in a capitalist Japanese hell, and provided Sean with a golden ticket into the madness demonstrated so aptly and absurdly with the show of communal exercises done at Naoki’s place of work every morning. The insurance collection officers gather on command to raise their arms in an uninspired union of circles. “It was like watching communism parade as capitalism,” a poignant point in Sean’s stylistic commentary.

The limitation of most films about Japan is their tendency to exoticise, as they paint beautiful portraits of individuals and isolation. In contrast, Sean does not merely show social anomie, but manages to slip inside, sit on the marital bed and split open the shadow hiding the man. This is quite a feat, and part of a poetic quote from near the end of the film that demonstrates Sean’s special skill at building a rapport, and pulling out the essence in people who willingly hold up their arms in delight to be got, at last. Ignored and scorned by society, but legal never the less, they stamp down their foot and maintain their right to be themselves, yet tragically have no one around who wants to see them truly. Like Samir and Kevin in previous films, Naoki marches to his own tune, and once he recognises and accepts that Sean can sense his capacity for living emotionally not rationally, he willing hands over his personality and future.

Naoki lives in a pill-popping, feeling-suppressing society, sharing a partnership and connection only with Yoshie, who is too tired to talk because she’s paid to hear the surface woes of customers rejected by their own wives through convention. Collective customs and rituals over bear individual desires. And here is where a lesser documentary maker would be pulled up and out for intervening and meddling in the development of life playing out. For Sean helps implement change. But not in a manipulative way, and not in an excessive-access-to-unrealistic-resources way. He operates like a friend, offering an ear to hear talk of how it is, and press for how it may be. He dissects relationships, to prompt his protagonists to locate the veins, and ensure their survival, if that is wanted and needed. Which is admirable, and also makes for a proper narrative arc in the film. We get a dramatically satisfying ending that extends the scope of the story, which is great and rare for a documentary that also offers subtle access to a closed and complex political context.