CineDOC-Tbilisi Documentary Film Festival Offering Wide Range of Events This Year
By Mariam Chanishvili
Tuesday, May 14
CineDOC-Tbilisi Documentary Film Festival is the first international film festival in the South of the Caucasus that focuses on creative documentary. The festival annually presents award-winning films from outside of Georgia as well as local and regional productions.
The film screenings are usually followed by discussions, Q&A sessions, and debates with invited filmmakers, Georgian civil society representatives, and Georgian public figures.
This year, the festival took place on May 8-13.
The festival offered Open-air screenings at Vera Park.
“Our industry program has undergone significant changes as well – all of the industry events were assembled into a single platform called CineDOC-PRO. Apart from the Civil Pitch which we are proud to organize again, CineDOC-PRO also includes the New Talents Caucasus presentation taking place for the first time this year. The presentation offered a great opportunity for emerging filmmakers to pitch their projects at the development stage in front of an international panel of experienced professionals. After the success of regional screenings in the past years, we are now happy to start training coordinators in organizing larger events – mini-festivals – in regions,” stated Artchil Khetagouri, the Festival Director.
Civil Pitch presentation, which is a collaboration between civil society organizations and filmmakers, took place on May 12 at the Open Society Georgia Foundation.
Civil Pitch is an annual project run within CineDOC Tbilisi, connecting directors and civil society representatives, focusing on public opinion through cinema.
Civil Pitch 2019 jury members are Kenan Aliyev - Current Time TV, Zane Balcus - Baltic Sea Docs, Mariam Chachia - Opyo Doc, Melanie de Vocht - Project Manager IDFA Bertha Fund, Maja Lindquist – Doc Lounge, Nino Orjonikidze - Artefact Production, Brigid O'Shea – Doc Industry, Melik Karapetyan –Golden Apricot PRO, Tue Steen Muller – Critic, Diana Maglakelidze – Georgian Film Academy, Sergei Trofimov –Current Time TV, etc.
The Open Society Foundation awarded one projects with 3000 USD, the second project with 500 USD prize for film development and the third project received 1000 USD from Current Time TV.
French filmmaker, Nicolas Philibert was the honorary guest at the CineDOC festival in Tbilisi this year, where he showed and discussed 'Etre et Avoir' and his newest work 'Each and Every Moment.'
The film - Each and Every Moment - shows the female students that embark upon courses that lead them to become nurses. Enrolled in Nursing Training Institutes, their time will be divided between lectures, practical exercises, and internships. This will be a challenging process during which they will have to acquire a great deal of knowledge, master numerous technical procedures and prepare themselves for heavy responsibilities. This film follows the ups and downs of an apprenticeship that will confront them, often at a young age, with human fragility, suffering, illness, the flaws in souls and bodies.
Sessions with Nikolai Izvolov, the founder of the long-lost footage of Dziga Vertov's first feature-length film Anniversary of the Revolution, also took place within the frames of the festival.
The 'Noosfera Foundation' is committed to documentaries, film screenings and training initiatives for filmmakers or media professionals.
The foundation is the main organizer of the festival.
