Of the clutch of films - all documentaries - that I saw at The Vancouver International Film Festival there was an impressive range in content and style. I just wish I’d been able to watch more - it wrapped on Friday.
Further to my earlier VIFF documentary reviews, here’s my second set of reviews:
The Vancouver International Film Festival got underway tonight with the Opening Gala, The Hummingbird Project.
There are 216 feature films and 120 shorts screening between now and 12th October.
Here’s my short reviews of three of the 61 documentaries showing at the festival:
The Vancouver International Film Festival yesterday launched the programme for its 25th anniversary film festival. Over 340 films will be screened between 28th Sept - 13th Oct, ten of which are world premieres, 26 international premieres, and 28 North American premieres.
The film opens with Pedro Almodovar's Volver and closes with Stephen Frears's The Queen, in which Helen Mirren plays HRH during the period before and after the death of Princess Diana.
It's often said that if you want to write for film you should start by writing a book. As much as 75% of all films made are adapted from books. You don't need to look far to see actual proof of this statistic: Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the James Bond series, The Godfather, to name a few.
So you’ve got a great idea for a documentary. Now how do you sell it? This was the premise for a public "pitching" event at the Vancouver International Film Festival’s annual Film and Television Trade Forum on Thursday 26th November.
Five documentary makers were given five minutes each to pitch their projects to a panel of three commissioning editors: Nick Jones, Head of Programming for Channel 4 and FilmFour; Richard Klein, Commissioning Editor for BBC General Factual Programmes and Ray McCarthy, Commissioning Editor for Regional Programming for Ireland’s RTE.