Verzio DocLab
7-10 November 2012 — Budapest, Hungary
OSA Archivum, Arany János utca 32.
Verzio DocLab is a 4-day workshop for documentary filmmakers, independent producers and festival organizers, who are working on projects on minority, immigration, social justice or human rights issues. Participants working on Roma issues, or coming from Roma background, will have a priority in the selection. Deadline for applying is Wednesday 10th October 2012.
The event is part of the Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival and will be organized in collaboration of Finnagora, Open Society Foundations - Arts and Culture Program, Verzio International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival and Documentary in Europe.
The program consists of an intense project-development workshop for 10 selected documentary projects as well as for 6 representatives of film festivals. At the end of the workshop, the projects will be presented in a public pitching forum.
The projects will be tutored by international experts. Among the invited tutors are for example filmmaker-consultant Rada Sesic (Jan Vrijman Fund, Holland), festival director Heather Croall (Sheffield Doc/Fest, UK), producer-director Stefano Tealdi (Stefilm, Documentary in Europe, Italy), producer-director Marianna Kaat (Estonia), festival director-filmmaker Sami Mustafa (Rolling Film Festival, Kosovo), commissioning editor Sari Volanen (YLE, Finland) and Hanka Kastelicová (HBO, Hungary). The head of the workshop is Leena Pasanen, director of Finnagora.
The workshop is designed to help the co-operation between documentary filmmakers, producers and festival organizers to network and to gain future co-operation. The filmmakers and producers will learn about potential forums to distribute their works and the festival organizers will learn about new projects and finished films that could be interesting for their programming.
During the course, the participants will get a better understanding of the cultural differences of documentaries in Europe and financing possibilities available for filmmakers, producers and festivals.
With the filmmakers and producers we are going through the principles of storytelling, choosing characters, writing a treatment and editing a trailer. Furthermore we will give advices on budgeting and making a financing plan for their projects. A special emphasis will be on verbal presentation of the project.
With the festival organizers we are talking about the various ways to profile their event and the new tools of marketing and promotion. We’ll give examples of potential funding bodies and go through the principles of festival programming and hospitality management. Our aim is to enhance the cooperation among various existing festivals and to help them make a stronger profile for their event.
How to participate
The deadline for submitting a project is Wednesday, 10th October, 2012.
The criteria for selection of the documentary project is, that the subject matter deals with minority issues, human rights or social justice and has international potential. The applicants must submit a two-page synopsis of the project, financing plan, CV’s of the creative team and a max 5 minute trailer of the project or examples of previous works.
All documentary projects should be accompanied by visual material, either as material already shot for the submitted project or as a previous work. Visual material can be submitted either by sending a DVD or by including a link to an online streaming facility (such as Youtube, Vimeo etc.), when emailing your 2-page presentation. Please note that submitted DVDs will not be returned.
The selection committee will also select maximum 6 participants, who have a key role in organizing a film festival. These applicants are asked to submit a short presentation of the festival, their CV and a description of the issues (f.e. promotion, profiling, financing) regarding the festival that the applicant would like to develop.
All application material should be sent by email to maiju.saari@finnagora.hu.
DVDs should be posted to: Finnagora / Maiju Saari
Budapest 1118
Kelenhegyi út 16/A
Hungary
The selected participants will be contacted by Monday 15th October 2012. The names of the participating documentary projects and festivals are also published in Finnagora’s website (www.finnagora.hu) and Facebook-page (www.facebook.com/finnagora).
Participation Fee
Participation fee is 20.000HUF (approximately 70 euro) per project, which includes tuition and lunch. Open Society Foundations - Arts and Culture Program will give six grants for Roma participants, including tuition, lunch, accommodation and travel costs. If you need further information on our grant policy, please contact: maiju.saari@finnagora.hu.
Verzio DocLab Contact:
Maiju Saari
+36 30 879 5676 / +36 1 478 1012
maiju.saari@finnagora.hu
Leena Pasanen
leena.pasanen@finnagora.hu
