News

“We apologise to the signatories for not communicating better.”

The Sheffield Doc/Fest board of trustees have apologised to the festival’s outgoing programming team for “not communicating better” after their contracts ended following the departure of Cintia Gil as festival director due to “artistic differences” earlier this month.

On Friday (August 27) programmers Juliano Gomes, Qila Gill, Carlos Pereira, Christopher Small, Rabz Lansiquot, Soukaina Aboulaoula and Herb Shellenberger - who worked on the festival’s 2020 and 2021 editions - claimed in an open letter that after Gil’s departure they were “silently locked out of our email accounts and all traces of...

The Sheffield Doc/Fest board of trustees has apologized to its programming team who departed on acrimonious terms last week, following the departure of artistic director Cintia Gil.

In an emotional statement last week, the festival’s group of seven programmers — Juliano Gomes, Qila Gill, Carlos Pereira, Christopher Small, Rabz Lansiquot, Soukaina Aboulaoula and Herb Shellenberger — spoke out about an ugly clash between the festival’s board and its outlook for the event, and the artistic team and their curatorial vision.

On Tuesday, the board of trustees released an apologetic statement that also asked some searching questions of themselves.

“We agree with the signatories of the letter ‘What is a film festival even for?’ that it is an important question to be asking,” the statement said. “And it’s also important to ask, how does an artistic program balance its subjects and perspectives, while simultaneously championing its filmmakers, growing its audiences and engaging its partners.

The programmers said they received no note of termination and were told they could “reapply for our jobs when the positions were advertised again.”

The programming team for the 2020-2021 editions of Sheffield Doc/Fest has written an open letter lambasting the festival’s board of trustees following the departure of Cintia Gil as festival director due to “artistic differences” earlier this month.

In a long statement, programmers Juliano Gomes, Qila Gill, Carlos Pereira, Christopher Small, Rabz Lansiquot, Soukaina Aboulaoula and Herb Shellenberger claim that following Gil’s departure they were “silently locked out of our email accounts and all...

Sheffield Doc/Fest, one of the world’s top gatherings for the documentary industry, is in turmoil as its entire programming team appears to have been quietly terminated following the exit of artistic director Cintia Gil last week.

On Friday, in an emotional statement, the festival’s group of seven programmers — Juliano Gomes, Qila Gill, Carlos Pereira, Christopher Small, Rabz Lansiquot, Soukaina Aboulaoula and Herb Shellenberger — spoke out about an ugly clash between the festival’s board of trustees and its outlook for the event, and the artistic team and their curatorial vision.

Noting that the entire group has been with the festival since 2019, under former DocsLisboa chief Gil, they claim they were “silently locked out of our email accounts” days after Gil’s departure, which was chalked up to “artistic differences.” The group also notes that “all traces of our presence at the festival—names, photos, information about our...

Paula Gaitán in Memory of MemoryThe following interview was granted by filmmaker Paula Gaitán to curator Francis Vogner dos Reis at the request of Universo Produção in December 2020. It was originally published in the official catalogue of the 24th Mostra de Cinema de Tiradentes, Brazil in January 2021. It was translated into English by Christopher Small and Juliano Gomes in June 2021 for Sheffield DocFest to mark the premiere of Riverock (2020) at the festival, her leading role in the international competition jury, and the release of Paula Gaitán: Acid Portraits, an online DocFest retrospective of five of her films. Many of the ideas in that retrospective and in Gaitán's work as a whole spring up in the discussion: the tricky idea of portraiture; of an incremental, intuitive filmmaking process; of sound and music as a fundamental part of each work, and of memory itself as something not easily catalogued.The term "artistic...

Festival director Cíntia Gil leads the team.

UK non-fiction event Sheffield Doc/Fest has appointed the artistic team that will curate its 2021 hybrid event, including a five-person film programming team.

The 28th edition of the event will run from June 4-13 both online and in Sheffield, providing Covid-19 distancing measures allow at that date.

Former selection committee member Rabz Lansiquot joins associate film programmer Agnès Wildenstein, festival director Cíntia Gil and deputy director Melanie Iredale on the film programming team, with Jamie Allan also joining up as Exchange programmer.

Lansiquot has been a leading member of arts collective sorryyoufeeluncomfortable since...

In today’s Global Bulletin, Starzplay secures financing in UAE; shooting kicks off on “Frayed” Season 2; Sheffield Doc/Fest picks its curation teams; “Operation Buffalo” lands on Netflix in Apac; National Geographic acquires Sundance hit “Playing With Sharks”; and Movistar Plus deals with Universal to bring Universal Plus to subscribers.

Financing

Mena streamer Starzplay Arabia has secured debt financing of $25 million from Abu Dhabi-based independent investment firm Ruya Partners. The funding will be used to reinforce Starzplay’s geographic and customer reach as well as the acquisition and production of new original content. According to the announcement, the influx of capital, building on $125 million in funding secured since the company’s 2015 launch, will also support Starzplay’s future ambitions through a potential IPO.

Starzplay was the first SVOD platform to acquire a license in the UAE, giving it an early boost over competitors and spurring significant year-on-year growth that has...

New international appointments include a selection committee and programme consultants.

UK documentary festival Sheffield Doc/Fest has completed its international artistic team for the 2020 edition, with a senior programmer, selection committee and programme consultants among the new staff.

The they will report to incoming festival director Cíntia Gil, who was appointed in July after seven years as festival director of DocLisboa in Portugal.

Adam Cook will lead the film programming for Doc/Fest as senior programmer. His most recent role was as founding curator of Canadian independent cinema strand Future//Present at Vancouver International Film Festival, while his previous jobs...

Sheffield Doc/Fest director Cíntia Gil, who joined the UK doc event this year after a stint running Portugal’s Doclisboa, has rounded out her selection team. In total, 60% of the team are women.

Adam Cook will lead the film programming team and will be joined by Agnès Wildenstein who is associate programmer. On the selection committee are: Christopher Small, who will also curate Doc/Fest’s 2020 retrospective, Onyeka Igwe, Qila Gill, Rabz Lansiquot, Melanie Iredale (who is also the event’s deputy director and was interim director for the 2019 edition before Gil joined), Patrick Hurley (who has been the Director of Marketplace & Talent at Sheffield Doc/Fest since 2017), and Mita Suri, who is the film programme coordinator. Joining them are consultants from Brazil (Juliano Gomes), the Middle East (Danielle Arbid), Russia (Boris Nelepo), Southeast Asia (Kong Rithdee) and Japan (Yu Shimizu).

Elsewhere, Joe Cutts will lead the festival’s Alternate Realities programmes,...

Thai-German title Santikhiri Sonata won in the international competition, while Pedro Felipe Marques' Breeding Ground triumphed in the Portuguese section. The 17th Doclisboa International Film Festival (17 - 27 October) wrapped with the triumph of Santkihiri Sonata, a Thai-German co-production directed by Thunska Pansittivorakul. The experimental, associative docu-fiction hybrid about the eponymous region in the north of Thailand and the rule of General Prem Tinsulanonda and its consequences, received the City of Lisboa Award worth €8,000 from the jury composed of Billy Woodberry, Carlos Almeida, Jérôme Bel, Juliano Gomes, Leonor Silveira and Mania Akbari. The film had its world premiere at Doclisboa. The Portuguese Authors Society International Competition Jury Award worth €2,000 went to French filmmaker Frank Beauvais's Berlinale Forum title Just Don't Think I'll Scream, while Brazilian director Jo Serfaty received a special mention for Sun Inside, which had its international premiere at Doclisboa. In the Portuguese Competition, the...

The Brazilian director Ana Vaz is steadily building a portfolio of experimental works that address in equal share the lasting impact of the spread of empire, and the felt effects of the anthropocene. This summer, Mubi is screening Vaz’s 2014 short film, Occidente, a captivating work that deftly layers sound and image, taking aim at Portugal’s colonial legacy and strategically drawing past and present into fresh and unpredictable relations. I spoke with Vaz recently about her filmmaking process, and about the philosophical implications of her work. Notebook: Your film is immediately striking for the diversity and material density of its images. Watching it again, I was particularly taken with the way that so much is concentrated within its 15-minute timeframe, just as there is a tension at play between all the different components. The most dissimilar of scenes somehow all cohere, while at the same time I feel a...