The Circuit

by Ray Pride
In its fifteenth year, Sheffield Doc/Fest still manages to come across as an upstart, with its range of intelligent programming and diverse menu of panels, seminars, masterclasses and events like Meet Market, which pairs filmmakers with commissioning editors in short sessions. And, as a non-premiere festival, Sheffield emphasizes quality, but also the assembly of like minds. Under gray Northern England skies, bright exchanges lit up the days and nights.

At the end of the event, which ran from November 5-9, another strength was added: the absorption of Oxford's BritDoc, creating a single super-UK documentary event for 2009. The 1,300 attending delegates included 350 from overseas, and over 140 docs from 20 countries were shown. Events tended toward matching documentarians with commissioning editors and producers. Festival programmers were underfoot as well, in sessions and in the Café-Bar in the Showroom Cinema center of the festival.


By my count, there were over 40 special sessions in the five days of Doc/Fest, such as Masterclasses with Nick Broomfield, James Marsh (Man on Wire) and with DA Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus, an interview with Michael Palin and a panel asking: "Theatrical Documentaries R.I.P?" which I think I'm sad I missed. Here, at "Inside vs Outside: Where Stories Come From an Why It Matters," moderator Liz Mermin (Beauty Shop of Kabul) goes toe-to-toe with filmmaker and a master of rapport with his subjects, Sean McAllister (Liberace of Baghdad, Japan: A Story Of Love And Hate).


Naomi Wolf offers impassioned answers at the Q&A I moderated after the first screening of The End Of America.


After Margaret Brown won a John Grierson award for The Order of Myths (including £2000), the small, heavy sculptured head of one of the fathers of documentary got passed around to friends for the rest of a long evening, including first-in-line Astra Taylor (The Examined Life).


Cynthia Lester, director of My Mother's Garden, contemplates John Grierson at close range.

by Ray Pride
In its third year under Festival Director Heather Croall (she of quiet banter and bold socks), Sheffield Doc/Fest was very much aware of both the pitfalls and possibilities for documentaries in coming months and years, even with statements like this from One Day in September producer John Battsek: "Most stories don't have the legs to get into cinema. And all of us make our films too long. Every second over 80 minutes you are pushing your luck."

But for five days (including wee hours nailbiting before Barack Obama's win was called), intelligent, informed optimism suffused almost every conversation and encounter. All in all, Sheffield has to be the tastiest buffet in the Yorkshires.


Journalist-programmer Agnes Varnum pauses with Jem Cohen and a young, fully bearded young filmmaker.


The festival's center, directly across from the rail station, incorporates gleaming new university spaces and the converted Showroom/Workstation space, which includes four screens, a café and bar, all of which should be the envy of cities encouraging the arts community. But a short distance away, double-decker buses and tramcars traverse a city that immediately suggests the industrial revolution past.

Stone archways are among the spookier elements to the architecture.  Sheffield is largely an old city, depressing in parts, moody in most.


The café and bar at the Showroom Cinema were crowded day and night. Hot buffet, dozens of brews, with intermittent showers of 3-D glasses.

I’ve never attended the UK’s Sheffield Doc/Fest, but a press release concerning two new awards sent me to their website, where things seem strange. The Green Award will be given to a doc exploring environmental issues. The prize: “Carbon Planet, a CO2 emissions reduction company will conduct a free Carbon Emission Audit for the winning documentary.” It costs 60 quid to be considered, and to get what could be a pretty embarrassing report card on your green film.  Another award, The Innovation Award, costs another 60. The Doc/Fest boosts an impressive list of attendees in the past. Journalists I’ve spoken with praise the fest. But as with many festivals, it could be struggling. In a letter on the fest site, new programmer David Teigeler regrets that they’ve had to impose an entry fee this year, separate from the Award entry fees, it seems. But he’s trying to make for it: “Each film will receive (anonymous) comments why the film has not been selected. This decision to give feedback will hopefully help the film maker in the future and aid the film in its further life.”  Sheffield Doc/Fest runs November 7-11.  (Mike Jones)