On Thursday 23rd-Friday 24th July I attended the 2008 Britdoc Documentary Film Festival at Keble College in Oxford. It was a lovely, sunny and friendly affair, packed full of people bursting with documentary ideas they wanted to make happen.
I was particularly excited to watch the “Good Pitch”, offering filmmakers to pitch socially focused films and associated campaigns, aiming to result in real social change. Eight filmmaking teams pitched their projects to an invited audience of observers, comprising film funders, NGOs, campaigners, advertising agencies, brands and media.
Whilst there were many great ideas pitched at the festival, there was a particular buzz over “Erasing David”; a personal and funny film, directed by David Bond, who hopes to wake people up to the potential dangers of Britain’s surveillance culture.
I am also intrigued to follow the progress of Marc Silver’s multimedia project “Resist”, which aims to explore resistance to social injustices around the world. The film will be on-the-road with Gael Garcia Bernal as he goes on a quest to find the alternative utopia that follows resistance. Good luck to them, I say; I hope they can tell us all how to get there!