With high profile documentary films like Bikes vs. Cars, The Forecaster, Good Things Await and We Come as Friends, Moving Docs is setting new standards for joint European screenings and thereby reaching out to new audiences across the continent.
Moving Docs is a screening partnership founded for the joint distribution of documentaries across Europe. The idea came from the Athens based documentary festival CineDoc, which organises regular screenings of award-winning European and international documentaries across the country. Moving Docs takes this idea to a pan-European level, working with international partners to organise joint screenings all over Europe reaching a diverse European audience.
The pan-European vision and impact the project has for a strong selection of documentary titles led EDN – the European Documentary Network to join the project as the coordinating partner. The project has since attracted influential screening partners from across Europe.
The full list of screening clubs, festivals and distributors working with a variety of platforms currently includes:
- Against Gravity, Poland
- Apordoc, Portugal
- Doc/it & Il Mese del Documentario, Italy
- Brave New Culture, Cyprus
- CineDoc, Greece
- DocLounge, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland
- Docs Barcelona, Spain
- Scottish Documentary Institute, UK
Among the selected titles for 2015, which will be screened and promoted by a number of partners are Bikes vs. Cars by Fredrik Gertten, The Forecaster by Marcus Vetter, Sugar Blues by Andrea Culkova, Good Things Await by Phie Ambo, We Come as Friends by Hubert Sauper, Toto and his Sisters by Alexander Nanau and Greece Works in Progress by Elena Zervopoulou.
As an example of the opportunities provided by the Moving Docs collaboration is a simultaneous screening of The Forecaster, which took place on September 29, just before the date of the economic crash predicted by the film’s main character Martin Armstrong.
The screening included a live transmission from Athens, where Martin Armstrong and director Marcus Vetter discussed the film and took questions from the audience joining the event across Europe. Due to the current economic situation and the subject of the film Armstrong and Vetter chose Athens to be a symbolic location for the event.
A further example of the outreach possibilities within the Moving Docs network are the screenings of Fredrik Gertten’s Bikes vs Cars. These are supported by the European Cycling Federation as part of a wider campaign to encourage Europeans to get on their bikes. Bikes vs Cars depicts a global crisis with a clash between the earth's climate and limited resources, and cities where huge areas are devoted to cars. From bike activists in Sao Paulo and Los Angeles fighting for safe bike lanes, to the City of Copenhagen, where 40% commute daily by bike, Bikes vs Cars captures the struggle of cyclists (and indeed humans in general) in a society dominated by motor vehicles, The film also shows the revolutionary and unexpected changes that can take place if more cities dare to move away from car-centric models. The European wide collaboration with an organisation such as The European Cycling Federation is an example of how the Moving Docs project can increase the impact of documentaries, - reaching new and diverse audiences and encouraging real life action.
Moving Docs is supported by the EU programme Creative Europe and funding has been confirmed for activities reaching into 2017. For the coming year focus will be on film campaign and outreach – not only for the selected titles but also with the motivation of creating methods and structures which will be of benefit and use to the larger industry community. New partners joining for the 2016 programme include, among others, Jupiter Films, France; Autlook Filmsales, Austria and Rise and Shine, Germany.
For 2016 Moving Docs is currently looking for brand new titles with a planned 2016 release and with great outreach potential. Further screening partners around Europe are also invited to come on board for next year for screenings of one or more films and in this way tap in to the pan-European outreach campaigns and events organised by Moving Docs.
For more information on Moving Docs visit www.movingdocs.org
