Authors — Pamela Cohn
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“The Empathy Machine”: The 2024 CPH:FORUM
CPH:FORUM, CPH:DOX’s international financing and co-production event, is growing in terms of attendance and international interest. Its overall remit is promoting and amplifying development and financing for risk-taking, visually strong projects leaning towards nonfiction—but impact journalism features, as well as a deep interest in science and technology, are equally vital, making for an interesting mix of ambitious projects. This year was the Forum’s 16th edition and the first without the electric, dedicated and loving presence of the late, great Jess Search as the OG MC. Search dedicated her career to nurturing, caring and challenging the wider documentary community, and her […]
by Pamela Cohn on Mar 29, 2024 -
“All Who Dream Are Not Equal”: The 2023 CPH:FORUM
A document is always an outsider’s view. –John Berger It had been five years since I attended CPH:Forum, with a pandemic in between. I’m having a lot of trouble recognizing once-familiar things in general but I know CPH:DOX well, having attended off and on for over 12 years, and I know that it used to stand for something unique in the nonfiction landscape. And while vestiges are still there, it felt this edition (March 15 – 26 in Copenhagen, Denmark) as if the whole enterprise was at a tipping point in terms of growth. Don’t misunderstand: What the team there accomplishes, […]
by Pamela Cohn on Apr 12, 2023 -
Rubbing Shoulders with Beauty: After a Pandemic Year, Acts of Looking at the Camden International Film Festival
In La panthère des neiges/The Velvet Queen, a feature directed by Marie Amiguet based on an idea by renowned wildlife photographer Vincent Munier, French writer and traveler Sylvain Tesson accompanies Munier to the Sanjiangyuan nature reserve on the Tibetan plateau, hoping for a glimpse of the elusive snow leopard. “Not everything is made for the human eye,” Tesson says at one point, a sentiment that is both a lesson in filmic observation—searching for the unseen in order to record it—as well as a commentary on the responsibilities inherent in that act. In the beginning of his expedition with Munier, Tesson […]
by Pamela Cohn on Oct 11, 2021 -
“Reality Isn’t Given — You Have to Take It”: Writer/Director Donal Foreman on His Fictional Memoir, The Image You Missed
“I’ve been able to develop more of a sense of being from somewhere by not being there…. Your nationality starts to feel like a more important part of you when you’re away from home.” Writer, director, and editor Donal Foreman splits his time between his native Dublin and Brooklyn, his home for close to a decade. Debuting in 2017, The Image You Missed is his first feature documentary, a fictional memoir of Donal’s complex relationship with his filmmaker father, Arthur MacCaig. MacCaig, the son of Irish immigrants, was a documentary filmmaker born in New Jersey in 1948. He made his […]
by Pamela Cohn on May 29, 2019 -
The Hurt Goes On: The 2018 Berwick Film and Media Arts Festival
“This film started from a place of anger, but as time has gone on I recognise that it’s perhaps fear; history is starting to look like a set, Europe a wanton cathedral of the past….a shit incinerator.” – from Callum Hill’s Crowtrap Once in a while a festival experience resembles a sort of fever dream. You arrive burning with emotions from rage to sadness to overwhelming angst that you live in a world where most people’s limitations of thought and deed are just not even remotely acceptable to you. In this case, I called at Berwick-upon-Tweed in Northumberland County UK, […]
by Pamela Cohn on Oct 17, 2018 -
The TIFF-Premiering Freedom Fields: It’s All How One Plays the Game
The ability to watch time unfold — to see its impact on both subjects and filmmaker — can be one of the greatest rewards in non-fiction filmmaking. As the protagonists on screen mature, morph, change, and grow, so does the point of view of the director. In the case of British/Libyan filmmaker and photographer Naziha Arebi and her TIFF-premiering documentary Freedom Fields, the moments captured over five years demonstrate how a modern, forward-looking woman, one devoted to family, education and profession, navigates a society in which women are directed to remain mute, defenseless and powerless. For her début feature, Arebi […]
by Pamela Cohn on Sep 10, 2018 -
“Capitalism and Democracy are on a Collision Course”: Astra Taylor on her TIFF-Premiering What is Democracy?
I went down yesterday to the port of Piraeus. …I was delighted with the procession of the inhabitants. –Plato, The Republic, Book 1 In her third feature, What is Democracy?, premiering this year at the Toronto International Film Festival, director Astra Taylor takes on the role of ombudswoman to talk to a plethora of individuals about the concept and idea of democracy. As she did in her previous feature, the philosophy doc Examined Life, Taylor poses open-ended questions to her subjects, generously giving them a free rein to not only tell their personal stories but to grapple with big ideas […]
by Pamela Cohn on Sep 7, 2018 -
“This Kind of Storytelling with Real People is Social Experimentation”: Marcus Lindeen on his CPH:DOX-Winning Conceptual Doc, The Raft
Reposted here from its original publication following last year’s CPH:DOX — where the film won the top prize — is Pamela Cohn’s intensive interview with director Marcus Lindeen about his provocative non-fiction experiment, The Raft. The documentary opens tomorrow for a run at New York’s Metrograph, with Lindeen and various commentators and critics appearing at the various screenings. Swedish artist, writer and director Marcus Lindeen stepped into documentary filmmaking with a very specific method in mind as to how he wanted to frame people’s stories. His particular obsession within the context of nonfiction is in the performative aspects of insinuating […]
by Pamela Cohn on Jun 6, 2018 -
Lumpy-Throated and Teary in Nyon: Visions du Réel 2018
So soon after Thessaloniki International Doc Fest I wasn’t expecting to be all that inspired to write about yet another festival, but an unexpected invitation saw me traveling to Nyon, Switzerland for the last few days of the 49th edition of Visions du Réel, an event I’ve been curious about for quite a while. But even after just a brief 72-hour visit, Visions inspired me greatly in the quietest, most refined of ways — the festival created a flawlessly professional but relaxed atmosphere to mingle and take in the beauty of the town, where every well-dressed denizen looks like they […]
by Pamela Cohn on Apr 24, 2018 -
Don’t Fence Me In: Pitching Boundary-Crossing Docs at CPH:FORUM 2018
Of all the various fundraising tools and opportunities at filmmakers’ disposal these days (the majority of them still in the DIY vein), pitch forums present a constant challenge: are they still relevant? With formats increasingly resembling chat or even game shows, today’s pitch forums are becoming performance-driven, the implicit agreement being that decision makers will actively support at least some of the projects presented with funding, distribution and sales opportunities. As someone who works in a freelance capacity helping to choose projects for various pitch forums (although not CPH:FORUM), I see first-hand how the few projects that make the stage […]
by Pamela Cohn on Apr 4, 2018
