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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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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There was a surprising amount of films commissioned directly for television playing at Sheffield Doc/Fest this year, several already broadcast, and many being aired very soon. So, this week, from the comfort of your home, you can play catch-up and watch a selection of the best suggestions.

A quick glance at the Storyville home page shows that tonight on BBC4 at 10pm is Prodigal Sons, which follows an old football hero who is now a post-operative transgendered lesbian woman, home for a school reunion, and was the film my festival comrade James Newton recommended most. In next Monday’s slot is Elizabeth Stopford’s touching film I’m not Dead Yet about an inheritance battle within her family, and apparently there is a twist in the middle that changes your perspective on everything. Strangely the film that played in last Monday’s slot, Operation Iraqi Filmmaker, played at Sheffield a whole year ago, and was picked up as an acquisition there, to be aired much later than its festival outing. read more

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Last night I went to the BFI to watch some shorts funded through various schemes associated with Film London.

My favourite far and away was Bevan Walsh’s nostalgically humorous Love Does Grow on Trees, which I’d actually already seen when it won Best Newcomer Award at Rushes Soho Shorts Festival. (One liner description: a teenage boy’s lust and desire for pornography in a world before the Internet.) This caused a few murmurs in the audience afterwards, because it was emphatically stated that the slate of films were all worldwide premiers.

New talent investment is a funny thing. Organisations give money to people to make films and find their directing voice, and mostly come back with perfectly acceptable safe films that seem professional enough but challenge nothing. This means they can’t be seen as ‘failures’, but is this the same as a success story? read more

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One of my highlights at Britdoc was watching the music short docs that were commissioned for a special 3 Minute Wonder strand. Music tracks were offered up and filmmakers had to pitch the documentary the music was inspiring them to make.

The winners were some of my favourite auteur documentary filmmakers, such as James Lees (who won best short at Sundance this year for The Apology Line), Pinny Grylls (Peter and Ben) and Christopher Allen (of the Light Surgeons). He’s done some really exciting site specific film projects at art galleries music festivals.

read more

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As you may have noticed, the judges of our bursary scheme are looking for strong visual ideas that stand a good chance of being selected at film festivals. We want to help you get your docs made AND seen by folk far and wide, so they need to get played. This means you’d be wise to understand what festival programmers look for when selecting films from the mountains of entries.

I asked Hussain Currimbhoy, the newly appointed programmer at Sheffield Doc/Fest, to offer up some hints for improving your success of making a film that gets picked and played. Here is what he wrote me kindly for your consumption: read more

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The line-up for London Film Festival was announced at this morning’s press launch, after an exhausting list of sponsor thanks. The 2 documentaries I most immediately want to see, having already read much about them, are Alex Gibney’s Gonzo and American Teen.

Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S Thompson uses Alex Gibney’s forensic skill of finding and weaving archival material together, to illuminate his contradictory life and gonzo approach to writing. Johnny Deep narrates from Hunter’s own words, a wise move following his apt casting as Hunter in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The film was immediately more profitable than his previous, Oscar winning documentary, Taxi to the Dark Side. It plays as the Documentary Gala choice. read more

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Here is one of my favourite docs of this year – and a grand example of the kind of thing that goes down well on the festival circuit.

Pinny Grills’ Peter and Ben is a dreamy and emotional film depicting the friendship between two lonesome outsiders; a man and a sheep.

In contrast to Pinny’s unconstrained use of the camera and beautiful visual style, there is a definite construction of a story. There is an actual narrative arch, rather than just a character portrait.

The soundtrack also really compliments the underlying nature/nature theme, and helps tie the film together.

Peter and Ben has been selected at numerous festivals, including all the big doco ones – SilverDocs, IDFA, HotDocs and SXSW.

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We have opened up for applications! In this first round, FourDocs will be awarding 3 people £1000 each to finish their documentary in tip-top shape for festivals. It’s up to you how to spend the cash. You might want some animation, a specially written soundtrack, or to hire a top notch editor to re-structure it. All you need to apply is a documentary project you are already working on, and some idea of what you’d do with the money to make the film better. There are full details of how to apply on our bursaries page.

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