Sheffield Doc/Fest
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“I’m Not a Fly on the Wall, I’m Not Invisible”: Jeanie Finlay on Your Fat Friend
Over the past 15 years, British filmmaker Jeanie Finlay has earned a reputation for nuanced, sensitive and compelling documentary portraits. Her films have told many unlikely stories: the rise and fall of a reluctant Elvis lookalike in Orion: The Man Who Would Be King, two Scottish hip hop fraudsters in The Great Hip Hop Hoax, a pregnant transgender man in Seahorse. Her third feature film, Sound it Out, told the story of the last record shop in the Northeast of England and its owner, Tom Butchart, a school friend of Finlay’s. The morning after the world premiere of Finlay’s latest […]
by Carol Nahra on Jun 27, 2023 -
Changing Documentary Release Strategies, the Rise of Podcasts and Climbing U.S. Non-fiction Budgets: Tracking Industry Change at the 2019 Sheffield Doc/Fest
A reminder that the documentary world is rapidly evolving was once again made clear at this month’s 26th edition of the Sheffield Doc/Fest. At the festival’s two-day pitch event, the MeetMarket, as well as at the lively boutique cinema hub at Showcase Cinemas, there were buzzy talks around smartphone filmmaking, the growing rise of short-form content, the emerging marketplace for podcasts and the array of distribution opportunities now available to all forms of docs. Addressing the festival’s diverse span of content —- subject matters ranging from gender relations and frayed international politics to Macedonian beekeeping woes — festival programmer Luke […]
by Tiffany Pritchard on Jun 28, 2019 -
Diversity, Immersion and the Rise of Short-Form Content: A Report from the 2018 Sheffield Doc/Fest
As it does every year, the 25th edition of Sheffield Doc/Fest offered more than just a stand-out mix of documentaries. Yes, there were many feature highlights — among them opening night film A Northern Soul, about one man’s desire to create and tour a musical bus post-Brexit in the U.K. working-class town of Hull; part archive/part testimonial fashion doc McQueen; the Sundance and Full Frame-winning Of Fathers and Sons, which masterfully depicts a father who loves his sons yet is teaching them to be jihadi fighters; and Under The Wire, which uses interviews and re-enactments to tearfully tell the story […]
by Tiffany Pritchard on Jun 19, 2018 -
Documentary Goes “Alternate Reality” at Sheffield Doc/Fest 2017
Virtual and augmented reality — a topic that is fast and feverishly taking over the zeitgeist of major film festivals — took center stage in last week’s 24th edition of the Sheffield Doc/Fest. “What exactly is a feature documentary now?” Paul Ashton of Creative England asked panelists from Sundance, VICE, the non-profit film foundation Cinereach and Germany’s broadcast outlet WDR/ARD. In part, he was referring to the festival’s endless range of strands that covered experimental film, live theater and an expanded VR and AR section — “Alternate Reality” — that included 25 works housed inside the stunning Millennium Gallery and […]
by Tiffany Pritchard on Jun 21, 2017 -
The Best VR of 2016: Arnaud Colinart and Amaury La Burthe on Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness
This year’s DOK Neuland, DOK Leipzig’s interactive component (housed in what resembled an intergalactic pop-up tent in the beautiful, wide open Markt) allowed me a second chance to experience what will surely go down as the best work of virtual reality seen widely in 2016. Fortuitously, I’d been able to catch Notes on Blindness: Into Darkness — the accolade garnering (Storyscapes Award at the Tribeca Film Festival, the Alternate Realities VR Award at Sheffield Doc/Fest) VR companion piece to Peter Middleton and James Spinney’s much heralded documentary — at the charming Savannah Film Festival’s VR Showcase just the week before. […]
by Lauren Wissot on Dec 26, 2016
