Submit to the 10th International DOK Leipzig Co-Production Meeting! Deadline 1st August 2014

Last call from DOK Leipzig:

‘Dear Friends and Colleagues,

***Less than 10 days to submit your film in development to the 10th International DOK Leipzig Co-Production Meeting!!***

If you are looking for co-production partners and to meet financiers in an intimate and productive environment, we invite you to submit your projects now for consideration. Deadline August 1.

Find more information the online submission form here:
http://www.dok-leipzig.de/industry-training/industry-offers/meet_and_pitch/co-production-meeting

The two day programme (27 & 28 October 2014) offers:

– Individual Meetings with broadcasters, film funds, sales and distributors and other potential partners and financiers. For a list of industry representatives at DOK Leipzig in 2013, please click here.
– Individual Meetings with your fellow producers, offering you and them the chance to build international co-productions, also with a small selection of hand-picked German production companies.
– The most up to date information on working internationally and networking opportunities through our round table sessions and case studies.
– Unstructured space for colleagial exchange and networking in a friendly, intimate and productive environment.

Against the backdrop of DOK Leipzig: the 57th Festival for Documentary and Animated Film. We will also welcome a delegation of Catalonian Producers, organized with Catalonian Films & TV.

Good luck and don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions! (oshea@dok-leipzig.de)

Brigid O’Shea & Christine Hille

DOK Leipzig Co-Production Meeting: call for projects in development

From our friends at DOK Leipzig:

“Dear Friends,
We are so pleased to announce that the 10th International DOK Leipzig Co-Production Meeting is now open for submissions. We are looking for:

Creative documentaries in development that are international in scope and looking for diverse financing partners, from Germany and abroad. In particular, theatrical documentaries intended for cinema release, however one-offs, series and trans/cross media projects are also welcome to apply.

The application deadline is August 1, 2014.

The 10th International DOK Leipzig Co-Production Meeting will take place on the 27 and 28 October. The two-day programme consists of individual meetings between producers, potential financiers including commissioning editors, film funds, distributors, and sales agents, as well as carefully-selected German producers looking for international projects. We also offer the most up-to-date information on working with international partners through our case studies and round tables. Participation costs 180 Euros for one participant, 260 for two (ex. VAT), including festival accreditations for the 57th DOK Leipzig Festival for Animated and Documentary Film.

This year we will focus on working with Scotland and countries of the Former Yugoslavia. Once again we will welcome projects from our partner initiatives Ex Oriente/IDF, Dragon Forum and Pitching Doc Montevideo.

For more information and the online submission form please click here: http://www.dok-leipzig.de/industry-training/industry-offers/meet_and_pitch/co-production-meeting

We are looking forward to your projects and wish you all the best for the upcoming summer!

Brigid & Christine”

‘Tussilago’ By Jonas Odell

What a treat to see the latest animated documentary from Jonas Odell.

“West German terrorist Norbert Kröcher was arrested on March 31, 1977. He was leading a group planning to kidnap politician Anna-Greta Leijon. A number of suspects were arrested in the days following. One of them was Kröcher’s ex-girlfriend, “A”. This is her story.”

In this film Odell has moved away from his usual method of weaving a story from multiple interviews and instead features the story of one woman ‘A’.  The pace of storytelling is fast and this keeps up a level of dramatic intrigue, supported by cut out visuals involving some complex camera moves and transitions.

We recommend watching Odell’s past films ‘Lies’ and ‘Never Like the first time’ which have both featured on animateddocumentary.com.

This film was kindly brought to our attention by Ian Fenton – thanks Ian

https://vimeo.com/84763962

‘Andersartig’ by Dennis Stein-Schomberg

Dennis Stein-Schomburg’s ‘Andersartig’, the German word for different, is an elderly woman’s account of her isolated youth in a German orphanage during a World War II allied bombing campaign.

Schomburg captures the visual essence of memory through the use of transparency, a sepia colour palette and floating camera movements that include  slightly conflicting uses of perspective. While much of the composition is left abstracted by splashed ink, these textures provide context for individual details to pop out. Recognition is owed to the director for crafting the feeling that we are experiencing the narrator’s minds eye.

Two and three dimensional animation components are combined successfully. While the image of a fish constructed out of numbers was designed crudely and moves with an equivalent level of elegance, the dispersion of dandelion seeds give a strong impression of air currents. These airborne symbols of childhood innocence serve as an impeccable introductory device to the impending air raid. Their aimless movement and silence function as a counterpoint to the droning intentionality of the aeroplanes set on civilian devastation.

Despite being based on a factual account, this film has a distinctly allegorical tone to it.  The first possible interpretation aligns this narrative with the age-old advice that one’s proverbial eggs should not be placed in the same basket. In case of a chance instance of damage this is a recognised method for preventing the destruction of an entire stock.

The second interpretation I take from this account weighs more on the connection between personality and survival. The title of the film presents a girl’s isolation and separatism as the main theme. Her resistance to following the action of the cohort led to circumstances that left her living while the rest perished. This is an appealing message as there is great value placed on individuality in our society. However, I am not certain it is wise to learn from this little girl’s actions, and by default her anti-social tendencies. If these circumstances were repeated the same results would not necessarily reoccur. This woman’s mere survival grants her decision the illusion of being correct when rationally it is fair to say this chance outcome was the result of numerous arbitrary circumstances. The connection between her personality and survival could be incidental. That said it is important to remember these are simply someone’s memories and any interpretation may say more about us, the viewers, than the narrator.

I find it intriguing to compare this film with Alex Bland’s ‘I Dreamt of Flying’, an animated documentary I reviewed for this blog back in June. Bland presents the other side of the story, the accounts of British and American bomber pilots that described raids over Germany. While Bland steers away from the civilian casualties associated with these attacks, there is little engagement with the wider context of war in Schomburg’s film.

‘Andersartig’ was brought to our attention by Florian Maubach, the director of ‘Iki – See you soon’ which I wrote about back in August. Maubach and Schomburg are both students from the University of Art and Design in Kessel. Dennis now works freelance as an animator and graphic designer.

‘Anima meets Doc: Expanded’ event at DOK Leipzig

This looks like a fascinating event at DOK Leipzig this October!

If any of our readers are going, we would love to hear from you. Event details are below:

Dear documentary and animation film lovers and makers,

we ‘d like to invite you to another great DOK Industry event: Anima meets Doc: Expanded, Thursday, 31 October 2013, 14:00 – 17:30, Ringcafé Leipzig

Anima meets Doc: Expanded widens its scope, inviting documentary, animation, trans and cross media makers to join us for an afternoon round table session of new discoveries and connections. Bigger, bolder, broader and under the guidance of 13 exciting table hosts from across these industries, be inspired by peers and forge new links outside of traditional genres, at one of DOK Leipzig’s most dynamic networking events.

This isn’t a traditional pitching or networking event, we won’t present specific projects or plan meetings for you. Instead we want to help you create meaningful working relationships with a broad cross-section of professionals, share experiences with like-minded colleagues and be inspired by forward, sideways and innovative thinkers.

The goal is connectivity: let’s establish a new community of exciting non-fiction storytellers!

You are working in:

– animation

– documentary

– in the trans or cross media world

– somewhere in between

You are looking for:

– partners to realise your next project which might be an animated documentary, multiplatform or outside traditional genre definition

– to get involved as a partner or collaborate on multidisciplinary projects

– inspiration outside your own area of expertise

– to meet like-minded film professionals

Please register via this link http://animameetsdok.wufoo.com/forms/z7x4m1/ before October 15. This event will have limited capacity so registration is a must! Stay tuned for the list of exciting table hosts!

Any questions? Get in touch with Katrin Haucke!

Iki – See you soon (Iki – Bis bald) by Florian Maubach

Florian Maubach documents his bicycle journey from Kassel, Germany, to the coast of Lithuania. In one minute twenty Maubach convinces us of his reverence for landscape, passion for adventure and artistic dynamism.

The viewer adopts a satellite perspective while the surroundings immediately visible to the cyclist distort into a miniature globe. This frenetically changing sphere helps communicate the joy associated with propelling ones self across great distances.

Further definition is added to his activities and various modes of transport through clear and simple sound design, avoiding the use of a narrator. For instance, his passage through the town of Palanga is punctuated by both the name appearing briefly across the skyline and a ringing of his bell. The visual emphasis placed on the movement of the sun and the moon helps abbreviate the passage of time in this very short film.

In the final moments Maubach breaches the realism of his constructed universe by having the character jump up from the sea, cling on to the sun, plunging the world into darkness. It might be fair for one to assume this is a playful metaphor gesturing the traveller’s triumph over nature.  While this decision reduces the film’s authority as a descriptive document, its location at the very end minimises such an effect. As credits are bound to break all cinematic illusions, this filmmaker seems to have recognised an opportunity for conceptual freedom in the seconds beforehand.

The 2012 student film, made at Kunsthochschule in Kassel, has screened at 14 festivals across Germany and the rest of Europe. I found the cheerful simplicity of concept and execution in this film resonant and refreshing.

‘A Brief History of the Internet’ by Melih Bilgil

Melih Bilgil’s ‘A Brief History of the Internet’ employs a distinctly simple visual language to depict a series of complex communication and technology developments. We are hurtled through the historical contexts of various breakthroughs that collectively lead to the invention of the World Wide Web.

This animation project was conceived as a vehicle for showcasing Bilgil’s graphic design concept, PICOL. Short for ‘PIctorial COmmunication Language’, the project consists of a set of standardized signs developed to represent various features of electronic communication. The designer hoped that these icons would join existing examples, such as play/pause, creating a richer vocabulary of universally understood symbols.

The director’s desire to cover the subject comprehensively is at times in conflict with the need to engage the audience, which creates a consistent element of discord. A feature common to many educational films is the interference created when entirely forgettable technical or historical referencing distracts from interesting learning points. The result of this is that the viewer’s short term memory is preoccupied by frivolous detail rather than the core subject; for example, the numerous acronyms that litter the script.

In this film, a number of concepts, such as the decentralized network architecture, are enhanced by graphic visualizations. These reduced models communicate the dilemma and solution elegantly. However, occasionally the imagery does not expand upon or condense the verbal explanation. Instead it repeats the narrator’s script and the feeling of tautology creeps in.

‘A Brief History of the Internet’ is comprehensive and stimulating. Occasionally it loses stride but ultimately one is left with the feeling they have learnt something useful.  Melih Bilgil lives in Munich where he works as a freelance multidisciplinary designer.

Call for applications to DOK Leipzig’s Net Lab

“An inspirational conference lab on the current trends of new media providing access to new information, intense networking and individual support for transmedia projects linked to documentary or animation.

Friday & Saturday, 1 & 2 November 2013

The DOK Leipzig Net Lab 2013 is a two part conference lab open for transmedia creatives, thinkers and makers. It offers intense individual support for your cross-media project, with an in-depth look at interactive storytelling and media architecture.

Film-makers, media professionals and transmedia creatives are invited to apply with their multi-platform projects linked to documentary and/or animated film. Up to eight projects will be selected from all applications and the head producer and two team members are invited to participate.

Deadline for project entries: AUGUST 18, 2013

Filmmakers, media professionals and transmedia enthusiasts without a project are also welcome to attend. Please apply till: SEPTEMBER 18, 2013.

We offer participants with and without projects new insights and inspirations on transmedia storytelling and production and provide a platform to exchange, network and join forces with experienced colleagues and media professionals.

Costs:
Participation fee with project (day 1 and 2): 250 € per project incl. 7% VAT and one festival accreditation amounting to 80 €.

Participantion fee without project (day 1): 120 € per person incl. 7% VAT and one festival accreditation amounting to 80 €.”

More info at: http://www.dok-leipzig.de/industry-training/training/dok-leipzig-net-lab

‘The Animadoc Dove’ – new award to be given to Best animated documentary at DOK Leipzig.

Great news over at the documentary and animation festival DOK Leipzig, they have just announced that this year they will be giving a prize to the best animated documentary in the festival. There is still time to enter!

To find out more, read their press release here:

http://www.dok-leipzig.de/festival/festival-news?start:int=0

‘Camp 14 – Total Control Zone’ by Marc Wiese

Screening in London on the 18th & 20th March as part of the Human Rights Watch Film Festival, this feature tells the story of Shin Dong-Huyk, born into a North Korean prison camp as the son of political prisoners.

Using animated sequences which are not perhaps the most elegant, the film nonetheless take us into a brutal and challenging world, both inside and outside the camp.

Festival info here: http://ff.hrw.org/film/camp-14-total-control-zone?city=4

Read more and watch the trailer on the film’s website here: http://www.camp14-film.com/CAMP_14_ENGL/Home.html