Abstract
“The Invention of Northeastern Europe” explores the geopolitics of programming at European documentary film festivals on three levels: networks of production and distribution, festival screenings, and the discursive framings with which the screened films are positioned in festival programs. These areas of inquiry align with the argument that film festivals participate in the cultural restructuring of Europe during the post-1989 transition period. Through original data sets, the chapter offers pioneering insight into the developing relationship between Northeastern Europe and documentary film festivals.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The work presented in this chapter was conducted in 2012–2013 and it belongs to Ilona Hongisto’s larger research project on post-Soviet Northeastern European documentary cinema funded by the Academy of Finland (grant number 265933). Kaisu Hynnä-Granberg and Annu Suvanto worked as research assistants on the film festival sections in Hongisto’s project. The authors would like to thank Varpu Rantala for her help in creating the data visualizations.
- 2.
IDFA Forum was likely modelled on the “matchmaking market” at Film Festival Rotterdam launched in 1983. This forum presented pre-selected filmmakers and projects to potential financers. In 1988, Rotterdam introduced the Hubert Bals Fund that supports projects from “cinema-developing-countries” (de Valck 2012, 33–34). As Miriam Ross (2011) notes, the problem with funding tools directed explicitly at “developing countries” comes with an inbuilt conception of these countries and their cultures. Although HBF has been instrumental in the making of many seminal projects, the demands of funding may also result in projects that reflect the expectations and understandings of the festival circuit rather than those of the culture itself.
- 3.
For more information on the pitching forums, see IDFA Forum, http://www.idfa.nl/industry/forum.aspx; The Art of Pitching, http://www.documentary-campus.com/v2/page/symposia/symposia_previous; Pitching du Réel, http://www.visionsdureel.ch/docm/pitching-du-reel.
- 4.
On the Visegrad Fund, see http://visegradfund.org.
- 5.
Mark Peranson (2009) makes an analytical distinction between business festivals and audience festivals. Speaking in the context of international film festivals, he notes that buyers attend business festivals such as Cannes or Berlin whereas audience festivals such as Vancouver International Film Festival have only little business presence.
- 6.
The Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries was launched in 1997 by the Baltic Media Centre. The EDN became involved in 2004 when it overtook the organization. On the Baltic Sea Forum for Documentaries, see http://www.mediadesklatvia.eu/baltic-sea-docs-2014. On the EDN, see http://www.edn.dk.
- 7.
On the Nordisk Forum, see http://www.nordiskpanorama.com/Nordisk.Forum-146.
- 8.
These are OneWorld—International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival (Prague, Czech Republic 1998–), Doc/Fest—Sheffield International Documentary Festival (Sheffield, UK 1994–), Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival (Belgrade, Serbia 2004–) and CPH:DOX—Copenhagen International Documentary Festival (Copenhagen, Denmark 2003–). The inclusion of CPH:DOX would have been particularly interesting as they have worked extensively with Eastern European themes and they also partake in Doc Alliance—a web-based project aimed to promote the digital distribution of European documentary films. Other Doc Alliance members are DOK Leipzig, Doclisboa , FIDMarseille , Jihlava, Planete+DOC and Visions du Réel. See www.dafilms.org.
- 9.
Initially titled All-German Leipzig Week for Cultural and Documentary Film. The current DOK Leipzig screens animations alongside documentary films.
- 10.
Since 2006, FIDMarseille has included both fiction films and documentaries in its program.
- 11.
The main Planete+DOC event is in Warsaw, but Wroclaw hosts a smaller related event the following week.
- 12.
Established in 1960 as “Week of Greek Cinema”, the festival became international in 1992. Thessaloniki International Film Festival first screened both fiction and documentary films and in 1999, a specialized documentary festival branched out from the joint event.
- 13.
Initially titled “Nyon International Documentary Film Festival”. Visions du Réel has been in use since 1995.
- 14.
IDFA statistics: http://www.idfa.nl/nl.aspx.
- 15.
Cinéma du Réel statistics: http://www.cinemadureel.org/en.
- 16.
The number of screenings (1539) is different from produced films (1082) as many films have been screened at multiple festivals. Chart 1 represents all screenings, whereas chart 2 accounts for each feature length work only once.
- 17.
The numbers include both feature and short length films. The Finnish number is based on statistics from the Finnish Film Foundation that include only films supported by the foundation. A few films—especially student works—are left outside the yearly statistics.
- 18.
In the third phase of documentary film festivals, as we have indicated, the programmers are by no means the only gatekeepers to what gets screened. The complex networks of funding and distribution manage the pool from which films are chosen. Especially at smaller festivals agents and distributors play a bigger part in the composition of the festival program (cf. Peranson 2009, 30).
- 19.
The 96 series have a total number far greater than 453, but this chapter accounts only for films produced and distributed between 1990–2010.
- 20.
Werner Herzog retrospectives have been screened at IDFA (1999), Thessaloniki (2002), DocPoint (2004), FIDMarseille (2005) and Planete+DOC (2010). Pirjo Honkasalo retrospectives have taken place at DocPoint (2004), Thessaloniki (2005) and IDFA (2010). Sergey Dvortsevoy has had retrospectives at Planete+DOC (2008) and Visions du Réel (2009), Andrzej Fidyk at Thessaloniki (2010), Herz Mark at Jihlava (2004) and Audrius Stonys at Jihlava (2001).
- 21.
Sponsoring typically takes place in one of two ways: either cultural institutes or other similar institutions offer a collection of films to be screened, or the festival groups films together and finds an appropriate sponsor for the screening series.
References
Balibar, Etienne. 2009. Europe as Borderland. Society and Space 27: 190–215.
Derrida, Jacques. 1992. The Other Heading: Reflections on Today’s Europe. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
De Valck, Marijke. 2007. Film Festivals: From European Geopolitics to Global Cinephilia. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
———. 2012. Finding Audiences for Films: Festival Programming in Historical Perspective. In Coming Soon to a Festival Near You: Programming Film Festivals, ed. Jeffrey Ruoff, 25–40. St. Andrews: University of St. Andrews.
Galt, Rosalind. 2006. The New European Cinema. Redrawing the Map. New York: Columbia University Press.
Imre, Anikó. 2012. Introduction. Eastern European Cinema from No End to the End (As We Know It). In A Companion to Eastern European Cinemas, ed. Anikó Imre, 1–21. Somerset: Wiley-Blackwell.
Iordanova, Dina. 1998. East Europe’s Cinema Industries since 1989: Financing Structure and Studios. The Public 6 (2): 45–60.
———. 2002. Cinema of the Other Europe. London: Wallflower Press.
Mazierska, Ewa. 2010. Eastern European Cinema: Old and New Approaches. Studies in Eastern European Cinema 1 (1): 5–16.
Moestrup, Steffen. 2012. Pitching Is Dead, Long Live Pitching. DOX—Documentary Film Magazine 96: 8–11.
Neuman, Iver B. 1996. Russia and the Idea of Europe. A Study in Identity and International Relations. London: Routledge.
Peranson, Mark. 2009. First You Get the Power, Then You Get the Money: Two Models of Film Festivals. In Dekalog 3: On Film Festivals, ed. Richard Porton, 23–37. London: Wallflower.
Rahayel, Oliver. 2006. Funding Film in Germany. Berlin: Goethe Institute. http://www.goethe.de/kue/flm/fim/en1394196.htm.
Ravetto-Biagioli, Kriss. 2012. Laughing into an Abyss. Cinema and Balkanization. In A Companion to Eastern European Cinemas, ed. Anikó Imre, 77–100. Somerset: Wiley-Blackwell.
Ross, Miriam. 2011. The Film Festival as Producer: Latin American Films and Rotterdam’s Hubert Bals Fund. Screen 52 (2): 261–267.
Rüling, Charles-Clemens. 2009. Festivals as Field-configuring Events: The Annecy International Animated Film Festival and Market. In Film Festival Yearbook 1: The Festival Circuit, ed. Dina Iordanova and Ruby Cheung, 49–66. St Andrews: University of St Andrews.
Ruoff, Jeffrey. 2012. Introduction: Programming Film Festivals. In Coming Soon to a Festival Near You: Programming Film Festivals, ed. Jeffrey Ruoff, 1–21. St. Andrews: St. Andrews Film Studies.
Sukaityte, Renata, ed. 2010. Baltic Cinemas after the 90s: Shifting (Hi)Stories and (Id)Entities. Acta Academiae Artium Vilnensis 56.
Vallejo, Aida. 2014. Industry Sections: Documentary Film Festivals between Production and Distribution. Iluminace 26 (1): 65–82.
Vilhjálmsdóttir, Linda. 2011. A Documentary Film Festival Circuit and Film Festivals as Field-Configuring Events, Adapting to Digitalization. “…To Get Together And To Really Talk About Strategies”. Unpublished MA thesis in Cultural Management, Bifröst University.
Wolff, Larry. 1994. Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of Enlightenment. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Wong, Cindy. 2011. Film Festivals: Culture, People, and Power on the Global Screen. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
Catalogues and Statistics
Baltic Films: Facts and Figures 2004–2010. Accessed April 23, 2014. http://www.efsa.ee/index.php?page=66&.
DocPoint. 2005. Lattunen, Tuija (ed.). Tampere: Tammer-Paino.
———. 2009. Remes, Mikko (ed.). Tampere: Hämeen Kirjapaino Oy.
DOK Leipzig. 2006. Steer, Patricia; Lukas, Claudia & Linde, Ingo (eds). Leipzig: Jütte-Messedruck Leipzig GmbH.
Finnish Film Foundation (SES 2014): dokumenttituotanto 1990–2010. Personal communication with Reetta Hautamäki (12.3.2014).
German Federal Film Board (FFA 2014): German documentary production 1990–2010. Personal communication with Witt Ann-Malen (11.3.2014).
Visions du Réel. 2004. Morgenthaler, Brigitte (ed.). Geneve: SRO-Kundig.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Hongisto, I., Hynnä-Granberg, K., Suvanto, A. (2020). The Invention of Northeastern Europe: The Geopolitics of Programming at Documentary Film Festivals. In: Vallejo, A., Winton, E. (eds) Documentary Film Festivals Vol. 2. Framing Film Festivals. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17324-1_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17324-1_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-17323-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-17324-1
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)