Scottish Documentary Institute

It’s that time of year again… Tomorrow the 70^th Edinburgh International Film Festival kicks off and we’re very pleased to see so many friends and colleagues in the line-up! With such a massive selection of fantastic films and events to pick from we thought we’d help all you Scottish doc-heads out by giving you a quick round-up of everything that we’re up to at this year’s festival:

This year’s Bridging the Gap is well underway, with our four commissioned filmmakers currently in production with their selected films which will each respond to this year’s theme, WOMEN. We are delighted that, aptly, this year is the first year we have an all female cohort of participants.

Natalia is a freelance video editor and motion graphics designer with a big passion for documentary filmmaking. Originally from Greece, she has spent the last ten years studying and working in Italy and England and has recently made Scotland her new home. Lindsay is a visual artist, filmmaker and underwater camera woman. Wilma is a self shooting filmmaker with several shoestring budget features to her credit and who has recently turned to documentary. And Lucie is a lens-based artist living in Dundee. Her practice is somewhat confessional, working predominantly in video and photography to express recurring themes of domestic relationships, gender and the unspoken.

We caught up with each of them as they enter this exciting, if challenging, part of the process, to hear a little more about their idea and its development. 

The Glasgow Film Festival is in full swing and if the programme is anything to go by 2016 will be a stellar year for Scottish documentaries. From genre-bending experimental features to storytelling and visual anthropology, the diversity of these docs suggests a healthy and thriving scene in Scotland. We’re very proud of all the films we've helped along the way and can’t wait to see all the others. 

Enjoy our quick round-up of what’s on over the next few days!

Commissioned as part of our Bridging the Gap initiative, designed to foster emerging documentary talent, we are delighted to see Mining Poems or Odes go on to great international success. Since its première at the Edinburgh Film Festival last June the film has won a BAFTA Scotland Award for Best Short Film and is now nominated for a BAFTA for Best British Short Film. The award ceremony is this Sunday so we will have everything crossed for that one! Between these two glamorous events the film has screened at Sundance Film Festival and here the Director, Callum Rice, tells us of his experience as a young filmmaker at one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world...

The film isn’t over until received by an audience.

After the premiere of Mining Poems or Odes at the Redstone Theatre, an ex-Miner from Utah, who was at the screening, stayed behind to chat to me. He told me about the older miners who sang opera down the mines when he worked with them in the past. This man from Utah had made an instant connection with Robert Fullerton’s experience through viewing my film.