DOCUMENTARIST 2011 festival trailer

Shortly before the opening of the festival, DOCUMENTARIST Project Development Workshop has started today in Sismanoglio Megaro. The participants of the workshop and their projects are:

* "Invisible Labor", Güliz Sağlam, Feryal Saygılıgil
* "Two Women", Tülin Dağ
* "Maya", Rodi Yüzbaşı
* "Silent Graves", Cenk Örtülü, Zeynel Koç
* "The Fisher in Dalyan", Musa Ak, Hasan Basri Özdemir

After the three-day long first session, the participants will be invited to be observers at the BDC Discoveries 2011 Project Development Workshop which will be held between 3-5 June in the frame of DOCUMENTARIST Istanbul Documentary Days. In mid-July there will be the final session of the workshop which is made possible by the support of The Embassy of Finland.

Check the Gallery for stills from the workshop.

The detailed program and schedule of DOCUMENTARIST 2011 is announced on May 18th. The festival will be held between May 31st - June 5th, 2011 in these locations: Akbank Sanat, French Cultural Center, Pera Museum, Cezayir, Sismanoglio Megaro and IFEA. Please check the menu on the left for details..

The 4th edition of DOCUMENTARIST Istanbul Documentary Days will take place this year between May 31st and June 5th, 2011. Like every year DOCUMENTARIST will present to its audience a great variety of carefully selected and very significant recently produced documentaries from all over the world. These documentaries cover an exstensive area of issues concerning politics, social life, arts, environment and individual stories.

Taking Turkey’s documentary scene in new directions, this year’s festival will focus on, among other themes, documentaries from the Arab world, ethnographic documentaries, films focusing on the post-Communist period and on music, produced in over fourty countries.

Check the film list here.

In the run up to the fourth DOCUMENTARIST İstanbul Documentary Days festival, cinema and documentary enthusiasts look to be in for a treat.
Beginning on May 31 and running until June 5, the festival will attract some of the biggest names in the documentary filmmaking world, hosting multi-award winning Czech documentary filmmaker Helena Trestikova as well as the pioneering İstanbul-born anthropologist and filmmaker Asen Balikci as guests of honor.
The 2011 festival venues will include the French Cultural Center and the Akbank Art Center on İstiklal Avenue and the Pera Museum. Taking Turkey’s documentary scene in new directions, this year’s festival will focus on documentaries from the Arab world, ethnographic and documentary cinema and films focusing on the post-Communist period. It will also feature a variety of innovative projects including the German “A Wall Is a Screen” project, where short films of various genres will be screened on bright walls in downtown areas.
Festival attendees will have the opportunity to hear the thoughts and experiences of guest of honor Trestikova, who is widely considered the greatest documentary filmmaker of this generation. The occasion will also mark the first time that Turkish documentary enthusiasts will have the opportunity to meet Balikci, a longstanding innovator in the field of ethnographic film and former professor of anthropology at the University of Montréal.
This year Documentarist will also be hosting a significant training initiative, Discoveries 2011. Organized by the Balkan Documentary Center (BDC), the workshop is aimed at Balkan documentary projects. Participants in the workshop, which will start with a one-week session in Sofia, should be professional filmmakers who have mainly worked in their home countries before and are looking to move into the international documentary market.

(Quoted from: Today's Zaman)

This year DOCUMENTARIST will host a significant training initiative, the BDC Discoveries 2011. Organized by Balkan Documentary Center (BDC), the workshop is aimed at Balkan documentary projects with an international potential and a cross-media angle. Participants in the workshop should be professional filmmakers who have mainly worked in their home countries before and are looking to step on the international documentary market. The workshop in 2011 will start at the beginning of May with a one-week session in Sofia. In the middle of the period there will be an inspiration session focused on storytelling with 2 established experts invited at DOCUMENTARIST, who have been acquainted with the projects in advance. At the follow-up session in DokuFest, Prizren the Best BDC Discovery Award will be given to one of the projects.
Yasemin Birkehimoglu and Melisa Uneri's project titled "Good Girls Don’t Kiss and Tell" (Yırtık) has been selected to the workshop from Turkey. Here are the full shortlist of the "discovered" projects:

* Andreea Valean, Tudor Giurgiu, Romania / project: Ciorica
* Atanas Georgiev, Darko Popov, Macedonia / project: Wedding and Funeral Orchestra
* Ivan Mandic, Serbia / project: Against all Odds
* Danijel Damian Nenadic, Oliver Sertic, Croatia / project: Silent Flight
* Petya Novakova, Nina Pehlivanova, Bulgaria / project: The Square
* Sabrina Begovic, Nejra Hulusic, Bosnia&Herzegovina / project: Undercovered
* Yasemen Birhekimoglu, Melisa Üneri, Turkey / project: Good Girls Don’t Kiss and Tell

Congratulations to all the participants!
For follow-up details please visit BDC website.

The upcoming edition of DOCUMENTARIST is going to be held between 31 May - 5 June 2011. DOCUMENTARIST doesn’t have an official submission procedure or any deadline. The program mainly consists of films participating on invitation basis. However, we are very interested in hearing about the latest films and you are welcome to send us a DVD screener of your work.

The 2nd edition of Which Human Rights? organized by DOCUMENTARIST was succesfully held between December 8th-11th, 2010. The main theme of the program was “violence against women”.

Over 20 films has been presented, including multi-awarded documentaries such as an outstanding film on Aung San Suu Kyi, the Burmanese female freedom fighter; the story of exiled Uyghur leader Rabiya Kadeer; the account of the the tragic death of Rachel Corrie, an American activist who was crashed to death by an Israeli bulldozer in Palestine; a brand new short documentaryt on Pinar Selek, a feminist and peace activist who has been labeled as a “bomber” for 11 years confronting the demand of life sentence, and yet another Turkish premiere of the highly aclaimed Swedish film, “Blood Calls You” regarding the domestic violence that the director herself was subjected to. Along with film screenings, the program has included many side events such as a panel session, a theatre forum and speeches.

Please check the Gallery for stills from the events.