A documentary festival in a mid-sized provincial Moravian town that has neither the proximity to a major transportation nor the ambience of a resort spot may have seemed an overly ambitious goal for a young film student 15 years ago. That's no longer the case. Festival director Marek Hovorka and his small team have built a festival that not only recognizes the energy going in the field of documentary filmmaking; they encourage it, through spin-off industry events (organized by the Prague-based Institute of Documentary Film, www.dokweb.net) that aid documentary directors and producers, with the end results often showing up as festival selections in succeeding years.
"We started out as filmmakers first, so we have a different way of thinking about a festival," Hovorka told FNE. That difference is evident in two of the festival juries. The main competition is judged by just one person from the field of documentary filmmaking. This year's judge is Asian-American director James T Hong, himself a past winner of the Opus Bonum main prize at Jihlava, in 2007. Even more intriguing is the jury for the experimental film section, Fascination. The inspired composition is as experimental a choice as the films themselves: a single family. This year the family is headed by Czech experimental filmmaker Alice Ruzickova, along with her scientist husband, and two sons -- including one infant.
Responding to developments in the field, the festival has added sections on animated documentaries and reality programmes. Three years ago, Hovorka was inspired to add a special event that would bring together documentary film directors and non-filmmakers with unique visions. "But we didn't have the money, so we waited," Hovorka said. Three years later, the festival still didn't have the additional funding, but decided to move forward with the event nonetheless. The result is this year's Inspiration Forum, a three day event that brings Cuban poet Carlos A. Aguilera, Indian education development expert Y.A. Padmanabha Rao, and the two members of the provocative Russian artists group Voina who are not imprisoned or under police surveillance. Forum curator Filip Remunda told FNE he was particularly pleased to bring the Voina artists to Jihlava. "Their work is politically incorrect," he said. Remunda knows something about political incorrectness himself; as a FAMU film school student he was one half of the directing team behind the controversial documentary Czech Dream.
Along with the festival's rich programme, Jihlava attracts serious documentary producers and buyers/programmers. The East European Forum is a standing-room-only event and the key place to catch new CEE documentaries in varying stages of financing and production. Organizers wisely moved the Forum to the final week-end, eliminating the need to skip screenings in order to attend the pitching sessions. And in recognition that no festival has the space to screen all the current crop of films that professionals want to see, the East Silver market has some 250 documentary films available for screening.
In recognition of Jihlava IDFF's importance in the area of CEE documentary films, Film New Europe and the International Visegrad Fund (www.visegradfund.org) will present the first FNE Visegrad Prix for Best Documentary Coproduction, with an award of 1,000 euros to the winning production company. The eligible films competing for the Prix will be announced next week.
