June 18th, 2012
From puppets to Putin we had 11 films on show last week at the 2012 Sheffield Documentary Film Festival. The event was a huge success as usual, with attendees from all over the world coming together to discuss and watch all things documentary.
Marina Abramovic: The Artist is Present was the biggest hit at the festival, picking up the most prestigious prize at the festival awards ceremony on Sunday. Taking home the Special Jury Award, Jury spokesperson Carol Morley (Dreams Of A Life) said the film “becomes a performance in itself and blurs the boundaries beyond performance, filmmaking and art and questions ideas of authenticity that allow art to come alive whilst giving an insight into a world that is often closed." This film is a Dogwoof Global title and we will be releasing in cinemas on the 6th July - find out more here
A special mention was also made to Call Me Kuchu, another forthcoming Dogwoof title, for the Special Jury award.
At the awards ceremony we also announced the introduction of a new award, the Tim Hetherington Award, which will be presented by Dogwoof each year. Restrepo director Tim was killed in Libya last year and Tim's mother will be on the jury. Tim’s legacy will forever define what we do at Dogwoof and his approach will inspire filmmakers for generations to come.
Elsewhere Dogwoof's Oli Harbottle was on the theatrical docs panel, read some of the interesting statistics the panel produced in this Screen feature. Anna Sissons was also on a panel on distribution - you can spy her in the picture above. On Saturday Dogwoof held drinks in a local pub and lots of our filmmakers and other documentary VIPs came along - head over to facebook to see all our photos from the festival.
