MiradasDoc, a screen open to the world

The Third International Festival of Documentary Cinema of Guía de Isora (Tenerife) will be held between 31st October and 8th November

Guía de Isora, 24th October 2008

The Tenerife borough of Guía de Isora will for another year be the home of the International Documentary Cinema Festival - formerly Docusur -, which is now known as MiradasDoc, with the aim of widening our vision of the world and presenting the reality of human beings from five continents and five worlds. The competition, which will be held between 31st October and 8th November 2008, will project over 75 films and will make the island of Tenerife the epicentre of documentary and social cinema. 

Together with the competitive sections, MiradasDoc will also show a sample of the cinematography of the three invited countries -Uruguay, Burkina Faso and Iran-, as well as the work of the Iranian film-maker, Abbas Kiarostami. A broad programme of workshops, talks, projections and concerts will complete the options of this edition of the  festival.

Official section
The official selection of films in competition will be eligible for over 40,000 euros in prizes which will be awarded in three categories: International, Spain and the Canary Islands. A total of 44 documentaries will bring to the screens of Guía de Isora the reality of such distant and diverse locations as China, Kenya, Romania, India, Sudan and Brazil.

The films taking part in the International section, twelve in the full-length film category and 15 in the category of shorts, will be evaluated by an outstanding panel of judges, made up of recognised professionals in the sector. The British documentary-maker, Michael Chanan, who will also give one of the MiradasDoc workshops; the Mexican, Moisés Jiménez García, who has been the head of some of the most important film festivals in Mexico; and the Columbian,  Orlando Aguilera Martínez, who works at the Film Archive of the Spanish International Cooperation for Development Agency  (AECID).

The panel of judges for the National competition and the Ópera Prima, devoted to new documentary-makers will include the scriptwriter and writer, Lola Salvador, who has had a long career in cinema, radio, television and theatre; the director and scriptwriter, Rosa Vergés, Vice-President of the Academy of Cinematographic Arts and Sciences in Spain   between 1994 and 1998; and the expert on cinematographic creation, Lourdes Rubio, Assistant Director of the Foundation for Audiovisual Research since 2002. The panel will assess eight films in the Ópera Prima section and six documentaries produced in Spain which will compete in the National category. 

Finally, the competition section is completed with the Canary Islands category which includes the particular vision of three documentary makers from the Islands.  Luis Roca Arencibia, a key figure of Canarian journalism, author of the first Audiovisual Act in the Islands; José Vidal Domínguez, coordinator of Culture at Guía de Isora Council; and the Cuban journalist, Francisco Puñal Suárez, with a long career in the ambit of audiovisual information, will be the people responsible for evaluating the films in this final category. 

Together with the prizes given by the Guía de Isora Local Authority in the different sections, the festival also has a Special Audience Prize, by popular vote during the festival, and a Prize for the best documentary on human rights, an award that is the identifying stamp of this festival in its commitment to enriching the fundamental values of the human being.

Information section
The second of the elements that make up the programming of MiradasDoc are the informative sections - grouped under the name of Docurama-, which open a window onto a range of emerging cinematographies, whose documentary works are on the edges of the commercial circuits.  Burkina Faso, Uruguay and Iran are the countries invited to this third edition whose proposals will be exhibited in Focus Africa, Focus America and Focus Asia of the Docurama section.

What is more, the Iranian film-maker, poet and photographer, Abbas Kiarostami, will be honoured in the space in the Docurama section called Punto de Vista, a part of the programme in which, each year, MiradasDoc reclaims the figure of a documentary-maker of acknowledged fame. On this occasion, the festival is honouring the forty-year career of this director who has conquered, practically, all the areas of cinema, but always outside Hollywood.   "ABC Africa", "And Life Goes On", "Where is the friend's home" and "Ten" are the examples of his films that will be shown at the festival.

Finally, the programming of the information section is completed with the cycle devoted to  The Documentary on TV. A panorama of the current situation of the industry through the selection of work carried out and broadcast on two Spanish channels which have made a commitment to this genre: TV3 in Catalonia and Cuatro. Reports by the journalist, Jon Sistiaga, Neus Ballaús, Carles Bosch and M. Lluna Antúnez are the works to be shown in this space.

MiradasDoc Market
In parallel with the rest of the festival, for one more year there will be a space for exchange and dissemination in the international forum of professionals of the documentary, MiradasDoc Market, which will take place on 5th, 6th and 7th November 2008.

The meeting is aimed at producers and/or film-makers from Africa, Latin America and Asia, who have projects under development and are looking for funding, or alternatively already-finished projects which need distribution or screening. Likewise, there is room for projects produced by producers and/or film-makers from anywhere else in the world dealing with subjects from these regions or with North-South relations. 

In previous editions, MiradasDoc Market has invited purchasers sensitive to the documentary themes linked to countries from the South such as 3 SAT, ARTE TV, AL-JAZEERA, Canal France Internacional, Canal Historia, Canal Odisea, Canal Plus, Cuatro TV, Doc & Co, Explora Films, First Hand Films, Televisión Canaria, TV3, TV Cultura Brasil and TVE among others.

The Screening section will give access to a comprehensive video library made up of over 300 titles. Purchasers, distributors and TV channels will have the option of viewing the best of current production of documentaries from the South, with the aim of purchasing the exploitation rights and reaching agreements for distribution or screening. Furthermore, the programme of MiradasDoc Market includes a section of Pitching: a personal and modern method for producers and purchasers to meet designed so that the projects under development can gain funding or pre-purchase agreements.  In this way, a commitment is made to direct contact between producers and commissioning editors from the different TV channels and distribution companies attending the event. The programme of MiradasDoc Market will likewise be completed with different sessions of lectures and professional round tables. 

Parallel activities
The scehdule of the International Documentary Cinema Festival, MiradasDoc is completed with a large number of activities which will take place in parallel with the projections. Workshops with prestigious film-makers such as Michael Chanan, Javier Rioyo and Emilio González; a wide programme of talks; and the concert by the Canarian singer-songwriter, Pedro Guerra, on the opening day will be the perfect complement to get to the heart of the world of documentary cinema and the realities that human beings experience every day on our planet.

Guía de Isora becomes, through MiradasDoc, a place where the energy, willpower and hope of the citizens of the developing countries surprise and enliven our western view. A space for hope, opportunity and better knowledge of the world, even in times of crisis. 

Guía de Isora will again be a meeting point for purchasers and sellers of documentaries from all over the world at MiradasDoc Market

MiradasDoc Market will be held between 5th and 7th November in Guía de Isora, and it will be a meeting place for documentary professionals from the south (Africa, America and Asia) together with buyers from Europe and  other northern countries.

MiradasDoc Market is the international forum for documentary professionals aimed at producers and/or directors from Africa, Latin America and Asia who have projects under development and who are looking for funding, or alternatively already-finished projects which need distribution or a screening. There is also room for projects produced by producers and/or directors from elsewhere in the world who deal with subjects relating to these regions or North-South relations.

               
                      
          

The Canary Islands, considered, due to their location, as a natural bridge between the continents of Europe, Africa and America, become in this way in the borough of Guía de Isora, Tenerife, a superb platform for a documentary market in which producers from the south can sell their documentary projects to the countries of the north. 
 
In previous editions, MiradasDoc Market has invited purchasers who are sensitive to documentary matters linked with the countries of the South:  3 SAT, ARTE TV, AL-JAZEERA, Canal France Internacional, Canal Historia, Canal Odisea, Canal Plus, Cuatro TV, Doc & Co, Explora Films, First Hand Films, Icarus Films, ITVS Internacional, J.M.T. Films Distribution, Nuevo Mundo Televisión, RTBF, Ruth Diskin Films, SABC, Smiley Film Distribution, SVT Arts & Cultura, Tele Asturias, Telesur, Televisión Canaria, TV3, TV Cultura Brasil, TVE, TVES and YLE, among others.

The MiradasDoc Market programme includes a Pitching section: a personal and modern way of meeting for producers and purchasers, designed so that projects under development can get funding or pre-purchase agreements. In this way, our commitment to direct contact between producers and commissioning editors from the different televisions stations and distribution companies attending the event is demonstrated. 

On the other hand, the Screening section will give access to a wide video library made up of over 300 titles. Purchasers, distributors and television channels will have the option of viewing the best of the current production of documentaries from the South, with the aim of purchasing the exploitation rights and reaching agreements for distribution and broadcast. 

The programme of MiradasDoc Market will be completed with different sessions of conferences and professional round tables, which together with the programming of the festival itself (official competition sections, exhibitions, retrospectives, parallel activities.) will make this event the ideal meeting point for the documentary professionals from the South.

MiradasDoc announces IsoraDoc, a competition for documentary projects about Guía de Isora aimed at local groups

Associations from Guía de Isora can present their ideas for a documentary project on social, cultural, historical, ethnographic or contemporary processes concerning Guía de Isora and its inhabitants. MiradasDoc will produce the winning project, which will be screened at the following edition of the festival. 

Any groups from Guía that are interested in taking part can register their projects, free of charge, up to 31st October 2008 at the Culture Department of Guía de Isora Council. The rules for Isora Doc can be downloaded from the web page of the Festival, www.miradasdoc.com.

Associations and groups from the borough of Guía de Isora may take part in this competition if they fulfil the requirements set out in the rules of IsoraDoc. The projects presented must deal with social, cultural, historical, ethnographic or contemporary projects concerning the borough of Guía de Isora and its inhabitants in the form of a documentary.

The projects to be presented must be accompanied by the name of the group or association, as well as that of the person who makes the registration, a résumé of the association and a synopsis of a maximum of five pages, in which the main idea for the documentary is explained.  

The work presented will be studied by a panel of judges, made up of professionals from the audiovisual sector, and its decision will be final. The IsoraDoc'08 Prize will consist of the production of the winning documentary project. For this purpose, audiovisual professionals will work together with the prize-winning group, through the different processes of a documentary production: script, shooting and post-production, and at the same time the project will be made a reality with the proper technical equipment and professional human resources. 
  
The documentary will be shown during the MiradasDoc'09 Festival and the group or association will be given DVD copies of the film so as to be able to project them at their cultural activities. The rights to this documentary will be the property of Guía de Isora.

The International Festival of Documentary Cinema, MiradasDoc -previously Docusur- is this year celebrating its third edition, an event organised by Guía de Isora council, and which takes place in this district on Tenerife (Canary Islands), between 31st October and 8th November 2008.

On 15th September, registration is open for the training workshops at MiradasDoc

Javier Rioyo (documentary scriptwriting), Michael Chanan (direction) and Emilio González (production) will be responsible for giving the training.

Guía de Isora, 28th August 2008

The International Documentary Film Festival of Guía de Isora, MiradasDoc, will open up the period for registering for the training workshops on 15th September. They will be held from 3rd to 7th November and will be taught by Javier Rioyo (documentary scriptwriting), Michael Chanan (directing) and Emilio González (production).

As is clearly indicated by the coordinator of the MiradasDoc Workshops, Rolando Díaz, at this third edition, the directors of the Festival return to the DocExpress Workshop, which was organised and taught with such success in the year 2006 by Emilio González, production manager of the company, Avid España. This workshop devoted to production will consist of shooting and post-producing, in the record time of four days, mini-documentaries which, once finished, will be exhibited in the square of Guía during the next to last day of the festival. 

The second of the workshops will look at the peculiarities of the script in documentary cinema which will be taught by the prestigious journalist, writer and documentary maker, Javier Rioyo. The seminar will help to understand what a documentary script is and how it must be approached and developed by its author. 

The third of the workshops planned by the International Documentary Festival of Guía de Isora will be taught by the British teacher, director and scriptwriter, Michael Chanan, a leading film theoretician, who has published a number of books on the development of the contemporary cinema industry. Professor Chanan's workshop, which will be taught in Spanish, will deal with a number of elements that a director must evaluate and prioritize when dealing with a project.  

The British director, Michael Chanan, will teach a workshop at the 3rd Festival of Documentary Cinema, MiradasDoc

The British film director, Michael Chanan, will be one of the professionals invited by the 3rd International Festival of Documentary Cinema of the South in Guía de Isora MiradasDoc -previously DocuSur-, in which he will teach a workshop of documentary practice whose title is "Directing Documentary Cinema". 

Michael Chanan is a documentary maker, writer and professor of the cinema and video at Roehampton University, London. He began his cinema career in the 1970s on the BBC with a couple of documentaries on contemporary music, and in the 1980s he worked for Channel 4, dealing with Latin American subjects. His most recent documentary is Detroit: Ruin of a City (2005). He has also written books and essays on the origins of cinema, Cuban and Latin American cinema as well as the social history of music. His latest book is The Politics of Documentary.
 
In his workshop, which will have a duration of twenty hours spread over five days, the British critic and director will set out strategies for the development of the process of production of a documentary, starting from the idea according to which making a documentary involves looking for solutions to problems which are generated during the process of creation. How do the ideas arise to make documentaries? What kinds and stages of research are necessary? How do you do a pitch (sale of a project)? And, how do you anticipate the problems of shooting? These will be the subjects of a workshop registration for which will open in early October.

MiradasDoc, which offers a look at the most important productions in this cinematic genre in the third world and in the developing countries, is made up of five different events: festival (with the informative sections and the competition section), market (divided into sessions of viewing and sale of projects), forums (with conferences, concerts, round tables.), EnseñanDoc (a docuforum with secondary school students) and documentary workshops. This last section has from the beginning maintained very significant quality criteria, and such characters from this kind of cinema as the Chilean, Patricio Guzmán, the Argentine, Miguel Mirra, and the Mexican, Alejandra Islas, have graced the festival.

Normally the festival management has divided the training space into three sections: one workshop on documentary theory, one workshop called 'Doc Express' and one workshop of documentary practice which is the one that Michael Chaman is going to teach this year on "Direction of Documentary Cinema".  

MiradasDoc Market, an opportunity to meet

The professional meetings forum of the MiradasDoc Festival revitalizes its options with pitching, screening and round table sections. 

Guía de Isora, 20th May 2008

The MiradasDoc Festival -formerly, DocuSur-, will in its third edition have a broad programme for professionals within MiradasDoc Market. This section is renewing the firm and decisive commitment of the festival to collaborate with film-makers from all over the world by giving them the opportunity to meet experts and professionals in this sector, as well as distributing their documentaries.

Therefore, MiradasDoc Market consolidates itself as a meeting point as it is mainly directed at producers originating from the south (Africa, Asia and Latin America) or who  have made documentaries on those continents which need distribution or screening. Likewise, those projects that are in development and are looking for funding are also suitable for this section. 

The Canary Islands, which due to their location are considered to be the natural bridge between the continents of Europe, Africa and America, in this way become, in the Tenerife borough of Guía de Isora, the ideal platform for a documentary market in which southern producers can sell their documentary work to the countries of the North.  

In previous editions, the Market section has invited purchasers who are sensitive to this kind of documentary subjects - linked with the countries of the South - so that the participating producers can have a range of alternatives to distribute their films. Among the purchasers who have visited us and who will be coming this year to MiradasDoc Market, are: 3 SAT, ARTE TV, AL-JAZEERA, Canal France Internacional, Canal Historia, Canal Odisea, Canal Plus, Cuatro TV, Doc & Co, Explora Films, First Hand Films, Icarus Films, ITVS Internacional, J.M.T. Films Distribution, Nuevo Mundo Televisión, RTBF, Ruth Diskin Films, SABC, Smiley Film Distribution, SVT Arts & Cultura, Tele Asturias, Telesur, Televisión Canaria, TV3, TV Cultura Brasil, TVE, TVES and YLE, among others.

The MiradasDoc Market programme includes a Pitching section: a personal and modern way of meeting producers and purchasers, designed so that the projects under development can gain funding or pre-purchase agreements. In this way, a commitment is being made for direct contact between the producers and the commissioning editors of the different television channels and distribution companies attending the event. Registration of documentaries for Pitching can be undertaken via the festival web site (www.miradasdoc.com) up to 30th June 2008.

On the other hand, the Screening section will give access to a wide video library made up of over 400 films. Purchasers, distributors and television channels will have the option of viewing the best of the current production of Southern documentaries, with the objective of purchasing the exploitation rights and reaching agreements for distribution or screening.

The MiradasDoc Market programme is completed with different sessions of conferences and professional round tables, which together with the broad programme of the festival as a whole (official sections for competition, exhibitions, retrospectives, parallel activities.) will make this event the ideal meeting point for professionals of documentaries from the South.

The Miradas Doc festival (formerly, Docusur) is participating in a forum on support for Southern Hemisphere film-making

This meeting took place during the 5th Edition of the Tarifa African Film Festival and was sponsored by the Spanish International Cooperation for Development Agency.

The International Documentary Film Festival of the South in Guía de Isora, MiradasDoc (formerly, Docusur), has over the last few days had a part to play in the African Film Festival in Tarifa, where it attended a forum called by the Spanish International Cooperation for Development Agency and the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation devoted to supporting Southern film-making.  

A result of ideas which have been maturing throughout 2007 at festivals such as Tarifa,  Salvador de Bahía (Brazil) and MiradasDoc, the conversations continued around three axes that the festival of Guía de Isora has kept active since early 2006: dissemination of Southern film-making - to which MiradasDoc contributes so much through its competition and informative sections -, support for production - in which MiradasDoc, through its market, is consolidating its position as an important platform - and training - in which through the workshops for developing projects significant work is being done.    

What is more, MiradasDoc had the opportunity to meet Michel Ouédraogo, general delegate of the Panafrican Film and Television Festival in Ouagadougou (Burkina Faso), with the result that the possibility that Burkina Faso might be the country invited for Cinemateca Sur at MiradasDoc in the 2008 edition is taking shape. 

The following people took part in the forum of debate on support for Southern film-making: Alfons Martinell, director general of Cultural and Scientific Relations of the AECID; Elena Vilardell of IBERMEDIA; Teresa Toledo from Casa América; Juan Jaime Martínez from Casa África; Benito Herrera from the Junta de Andalucía; Eduardo Trías from the Latin-American Film Festival in Huelva, Juan Ferrer from the Latin-American Film Festival in Lerida; Marie Elene Vallpuesta from the African Film Festival in Barcelona; Mane Cisneros from the Festival of African Cinema in Tarifa, Javier Corcuera from the International Saharan Film Festival; José Sánchez  and Enrique Moratalla from the Granada Festival of Southern Cinema; Oriol Freixa, advisor to the European Union on Developing Countries and Alejandro Krawietz from MiradasDoc.

The Tenerife Island Authority gives its support to the third edition of MiradasDoc