Festivals/special programs

International Documentary Filmfestival, Amsterdam 2001

The International Documentary Filmfestival taking place in Amsterdam, Netherlands, is currently the most significant documentary festival in the world. The festival was started 14 years ago by a group of enthusiastic young girls who, after graduating from college, wanted to create something new and different in the world of film in Netherlands. Their beginnings were rather modest. They started with domestic film projections accompanied by an occasional guest, discussion or a special programme. The organizing team remained the same to this day. Its members are mostly women, however, the festival can now hardly be called modest — on the contrary, it is rich, even glamorous, to the extent that the authors of films allow.

The number of festival viewers has been increasing year after year (last festival was attended by 60 000 viewers), and so has the number of prominent guests: authors, TV editors, critics, and producers. During the ten day festival in Amsterdam the audience can see approximately 200 interesting and important documentaries and experience new trends in the international documentary filmmaking, or meet classical authors such as Albert Maysles. On the other hand, the festival has become interesting to business people too. Although being the most representative festival of documentary film featuring some excellent programmes, it still has some limitations.

Film selectors always seem to fall for a certain theme, time of shooting, or circumstances (country at war, rape, terrorism...) paying less attention to films style or language. However, even an excellent film with a theme already dealt with at one of the festivals will not enter the competition. On the other hand, authors from the countries dealing with various crises complain that European festivals turn away from their burning issues imposing criteria for technical quality and style that they cannot fulfill. Their films are, these authors say, usually screened in less important, thematical programs, and rarely in competition.

If we disregard the issue of competition, numerous programs, thirteen of them to be more precise, with accompanying, important events (for example Pitching Forum) and film courses offer quite a diverse array of films. The author of the essay analyses the profile of each of the programmes of the last year’s festival (2001) and some of the more prominent films shown. She also reviews the reactions on the several Croatian films screened in special programmes.

Rada Šešić