Victor Kossakovsky
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True/False Diary 1: Approaching The Elephant, Demonstration, Sacro GRA
Halfway through, it’s too early to take the overall temperature of True/False 2014 in its 11th year (my fifth attending, each year with the hotel paid; full disclosure). All smooth so far, though it’s early going, so let’s forego atmospherics at this point and jump into one of the festival’s world premieres, Approaching The Elephant. (“Thanks for everyone being here for basically the highlight of my life,” director Amanda Rose Wilder said in her introduction.) The subject is “free schools”: further left on the continuum than Montessori, and (at least as practiced by the subject school’s founder Alex Khost) an […]
by Vadim Rizov on Mar 1, 2014 -
Thessaloniki Documentary Festival 2013
Greeks, if not Greece, persist. In March, the 15th edition of the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival presented 76 Greek premieres among its teeming 10 days of attractions, streaming many films across Greece and Cyprus, as well as 520 films in a Market with 55 buyers from around the world. “Here we are again, despite the hardships,” Dimitri Eipides, artistic director of the Thessaloniki International Film Festival and TDF reflected on opening night. Of its 1999 inaugural, he said, “Audiences were skeptical then. The establishment of an internationally acclaimed institution celebrating the art of documentary was something unheard of in Greece. But […]
by Ray Pride on Jul 18, 2013 -
CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS? VIEWS FROM MARCH 2012’s THESSALONIKI DOC FEST
It’s the Greek moment. Again. Still. Thousands of years of civilization, and we’re still anxiously awaiting an epistle from Hellas! In the first hours after Sunday’s fraught second Parliamentary election of the year, few analysts are confident there won’t be a third election or that even the successful formation of a coalition government would last, or be able to withstand the growing force of the Euro-wide economic crisis. The Thessaloniki Documentary Festival, also known as “Images of the 21st Century,” in its fourteenth year, took place in mid-March 2012, before the inconclusive May 6 elections had even been set. Here […]
by Ray Pride on Jun 18, 2012 -
A Pregnant Pause Before the Reborn Edinburgh Film Festival
When it comes to Edinburgh, I’m no festival virgin. However, this is the first festival in the 15 years I’ve been attending either as staff, filmmaker or delegate, when I will be seven-and-a-half months pregnant. I will be waddling, Marge Gunderson style, from cinema to cinema, hopefully securing seats on the end of the row (leaving me with the perfect excuse to pop out early). I will NOT be quaffing vats of dry white wine, or even whiskey (sob) but that means I will hopefully remember the names of everyone I meet and won’t be dozing off during the more […]
by Hope Dickson Leach on May 31, 2012
