Observer passes now available for the Edinburgh Pitch

In its 6th year and running alongside the Edinburgh International Film Festival (20 June-1 July), the Edinburgh Pitch is the only international documentary pitching forum in Scotland. Independent filmmakers and companies developing and raising finance for creative feature documentaries will be pitching their project in front of an international panel.

Standard Observer Pass: £24 (VAT incl.)
Buy your pass

Student Observer Pass: £12 (VAT incl.)
Buy your pass

The Edinburgh Pitch
19 June – 9:30-17:30
Traverse Theatre – 10 Cambridge Street – Edinburgh EH1 2ED

Confirmed panellists: Salma Abdalla (Autlook Filmsales), Claire Aguilar (ITVS), Leslie Finlay (Creative Scotland), Sigrid Dyekjaer (Danish Documentary), Charlotte Gry Madsen (DR Sales International), Diana Holtzberg (Films Transit International), Elisabeth Hulten (ARTE France), Simon Kilmurry (POV), Neil McDonald (BBC Scotland), Sabine Rollberg (Arte WDR), Kate Townsend (BBC Storyville), Wim van Rompaey (Lichtpunt), Jenny Westergard (YLE), Debra Zimmerman (Women Make Movies)

Your Edinburgh Pitch Observer Pass will also allow you to attend Docs in Progress screenings. Selected filmmakers will show 20 minutes of their rough cut and will receive feedback from professionals and observers, focusing on creative decision making and editing.

Docs in Progress
20 June – 14:30-17:30
ECA (Lecture Theatre O17) – 74 Lauriston Place – Edinburgh EH3 9DF

For more information on the Edinburgh Pitch or Docs in Progress, email Flore at flore@scottishdocinstitute.com

Su Bainbridge – Aconite Productions
Felipe Bustos Sierra – Debasers Filums
Lindsay Goodall – Beau Films
Karen Guthrie – Somewhere
Scott P. Harris
Sabine Hellmann / Adam Barnett
Maia Isaac
David Street – Journey Pictures

Interdoc Scotland is helping ambitious and emerging Scottish producers with a feature documentary in development to strategise their finance plans and increase their chances of successfully funding their documentaries.

Bridging the Gap is supported by Creative Scotland and Edinburgh College of Art (Edinburgh University).

Come and join internationally acclaimed documentary director, producer and camerawoman Jennifer Fox as she lets us into the process of her work.

20 years it took to film her ground-breaking new feature documentary, ‘My Reincarnation’ using the relatively new technique of crowd-funding to great success. Her ‘Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman’ was self-distributed and screened globally.

Don’t miss this opportunity to listen to Jennifer Fox share her experience of filmmaking, self-distribution and much more.

FREE but places are limited so please RSVP to flore@scottishdocinstitute.com

‘My Reincarnation’ will screen on the same day at 6:00pm at the Filmhouse. (The screening will be followed by a Q&A with the film maker)
Tickets for this screening can be purchased at www.filmhousecinema.com

Michel Wenzer will share his experience of filming in a maximum security prison with men who will never be free again. He will also discuss the importance of soundscape and sound design in documentary.

FREE but places are limited so please RSVP to flore@scottishdocinstitute.com

At Night I Fly will screen at the Glasgow Film Festival on Wednesday 22 February – 3:45pm – Book your seat here!

We are delighted to announce the selected filmmakers:
Alasdair Bayne – In search of the Wallaby
Paul Fegan – Pouters
Yu-Hsueh Lin – Takeaway
Chico Pereira – Seafarers

More hard work ahead! The films are expected for delivery by the end of May 2012.

Consistently picking up awards, BAFTA’s, special mentions and festival screenings in over 40 countries worldwide, Bridging the Gap is one of the leading documentary new talent initiatives for cinema in the UK. It offers an intense creative training programme alongside production and distribution. This year the four short documentaries have been allocated a budget of up to £16K each (8K cash, 8K in-kind).

Bridging the Gap is supported by Creative Scotland and Edinburgh College of Art (Edinburgh University)

12 participants will be selected and given the opportunity to pitch their project in front of a carefully selected panel of international and UK commissioning editors, sales agents and producers, followed by individual meetings. The Pitch will take place on Tuesday 19 June and will also be opened to Observers.

In addition to The Edinburgh Pitch, up to 3 UK and international documentaries at a rough cut stage will be selected to be screened to financiers and observers, allowing filmmakers to receive constructive feedback with focus on creative decision making and editing. Docs in Progress will take place on Wednesday 20 June 2012.

The Edinburgh Pitch and Docs in Progress are open to observers and passes will be available soon on www.scottishdocinstitute.com

 
Confirmed panellists for 2012: Salma Abdalla (Autlook Filmsales), Claire Aguilar (ITVS), Leslie Finlay (Creative Scotland), Charlotte Gry Madsen (DR Sales International), Diana Holtzberg (Films Transit International), Elisabeth Hulten (ARTE France), Simon Kilmurry (POV), Neil McDonald (BBC Scotland), Kate Townsend (BBC Storyville), Wim van Rompaey (Lichtpunt), Jenny Westergard (YLE), Debra Zimmerman (Women Make Movies)

The Edinburgh Pitch is part of Docscene, a yearlong programme of documentary training, funded by Creative Scotland and supported by Edinburgh College of Art (University of Edinburgh).

Bart Simpson has produced ‘The Corporation’ (Sundance winner), a documentary exploring the curious history, inner workings, controversial impacts and potential future of corporations, and Frederik Gertten’s ‘Bananas!’, on Nicaraguan banana workers battling against Dole Food and their use of a banned pesticide.

Can films change the world? How do you raise awareness through documentaries? And how do you turn films into movements?

Don’t miss this great opportunity to get an experienced producer’s answers to these burning questions!

FREE but places are limited so please RSVP to flore@scottishdocinstitute.com

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Rosie Crerar, Program Manager said: “The jury felt the film was outstanding, and reached a unanimous decision very quickly tonight”

The Flickerfest Film Festival is held during the summer on the glorious sands of Bondi Beach, Australia. Now in it’s 21^st  year the film festival is the only competitive short film festival in Australia. In 2003 the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science elected to recognise Flickererfest as a qualifying festival for the Best Short Film and Best Animation categories of the Academy® Awards. In 2010, Flickerfest was also recognised by the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), making films from the UK that won at Flickerfest, eligible for a BAFTA nomination. They are the only short film festival in Australia with BAFTA and Academy® accredited status.

Directors Adrian McDowall and Finlay Pretsell said: “We’re absolutely delighted to be given the award for Best Documentary Film at Flickerfest. What a great way to start the film’s festival circuit! This is a fantastic achievement to get to this point. The film was such a challenge to make at every step of the way – the award goes to everyone who worked tirelessly on the film to get it finished and of course the generous help of the Scottish Prison Service and the prisoners that opened up their lives and allowed us to tell this story”.

Sonja Henrici, Head of Development at Scottish Documentary Institute said: “It’s exciting to see the continued success of proven short film talent with a 30’ documentary this time. SDI has been delighted to be part of the team.”

The film was screened on BBC2 in November and screened yesterday at London Short Film Festival. The film was produced by Imagine Pictures and DigiCult and funded by Creative Scotland, UK Film Council and BBC Scotland.

Leslie Finlay of Creative Scotland said: “Creative Scotland is delighted that Cutting Loose has won a major prize at this prestigious film festival.  It celebrates the depth of documentary talent being invested and supported by Creative Scotland across Scotland.”

Acclaimed filmmaker Vadim Jendreyko is doing us the honour to come to ECA and present his latest documentary ‘The Woman with the 5 Elephants’, unreleased in the UK. 

The screening will be followed by a masterclass.

“From a filmmaker at the top of his game, this film is a living Vermeer, beautifully framed, elegant and elegiac, with an artistic vision that mirrors and augments its subject. This graceful and compelling work explores how beauty and creativity can transcend the harshness of life, and the jury believes it will be as rewarding in 40 years as it is today.”  Grand Jury Award, Silverdocs, Sterling World Feature Price

Although witness to unspeakable horrors, eighty-five-year-old Svetlana Geier dedicated her life to language. Considered the greatest translator of Russian literature into German, Svetlana has just concluded her magnum opus, completing new translations of Dostoyevsky’s five great novels—known as “the five elephants.” As a precocious teenager living in Ukraine with an unusual facility for languages, Svetlana was brought to the attention of her country’s Nazi occupiers during World War II, and found uneasy refuge translating for them. She fled in 1943 and never returned … until now.

The film interweaves the story of Svetlana’s early life with her literary work, and follows her on her first trip back to her homeland after nearly six decades away, all the while revealing how a love of language outshines all else.

For more information on the film, go to www.5elefanten.ch or have a look at the Trailer.

FREE but places are limited so please RSVP to flore@scottishdocinstitute.com

The selection process was tough, as usual, and we decided to go for 11 projects in the end. We had a wide range of proposals from across Scotland, dealing amongst other things with immigration, unemployment, depression as well as a range of first person stories. But not all was gloomy and our development period will tease out new layers for each film. Thank you to everyone who applied. For those who didn’t get selected, Bridging the Gap will be back next year and watch out for other opportunities coming your way.

The short-listed filmmakers now have two months and two intense training workshops ahead of them to get their project ready for the commissioning pitch in early February 2012. We are looking forward to working with them!

Alasdair Bayne – Wallaby
Paul Fegan – Pouters
Martin Glegg – Glasgow and the Curiosity of Ice Cream Vans on Cold Nights
Shaun Glowa – Stuffed
Daniel Gough – The Boogie Woogie Swamp
Zak Hanif – My Dad the Reluctant Scot
Chris Leslie - The End of the Line
Marie Liden – Dead to the World
Yu-Hsueh Lin – Sweet and Sour
Wendy McMurdo – The Robot House
Chico Pereira – Seafarers

Bridging the Gap is supported by Creative Scotland and Edinburgh College of Art (Edinburgh University)

Agnes & Nancy

Agnes was diagnosed with dementia in her fifties. Five years have passed and she is still struggling with her new identity, and the loss of who she once was. A film about friendship and living with dementia.

Director/Producer: Anne Milne
Editor: Anne Milne
Camera: Anne Milne
Sound: Sabine Hellmann
Music: The Performers
Sound Edit/Mix: Rob Walker
Executive Producers: Ruth Barlett, Caroline Hick
Made possible with support from the Economic and
Social Research Council

Screening Formats: Digi Beta, HDCam, DV-Cam

Highlights:
IDFA, 2011 (The Netherlands)
Scottish Mental Health Film Festival, Edinburgh Filmhouse, 2011

If you are a festival programmer or buyer, please contact us if you’d like to view the film online.