The Lau Haizetara Documentary Co-Production Forum has successfully celebrated its latest edition with a notably high level of projects.
The event, which took place yesterday, 27th September 2018, within the framework of the 66th San Sebastian Film Festival, was well received by the audience. Ten countries were represented by fourteen feature-length projects, dealing with subjects such as freedom, love, personal and social conflicts, music, history, human relationships, generational change and human rights. The projects The other side of the river produced by Doppelplusultra Film und TV Produktion and Mal de caña produced by Batabat SCCL, came from FIPADOC (International Festival of Audiovisual Programmes of Biarritz) and DOCS Barcelona, respectively, a result of the agreement IBAIA has with them to boost the presence of projects in two different complementary and specialised markets.
The main objective of this Forum is to offer an ideal space in which to present documentary projects to potential funders and experts from the audiovisual and cinema sectors.
In the preceding days, the producers of the selected projects attended workshops with professional experts. They worked exhaustively on presentation, both of the storyline and the teaser, and they were able to maximise the potential of their projects before presenting them. In addition, they were given guidelines to improve individualised meetings with the Commissioning Editors, a panel which was more international in flavour than ever: (TVE) Andrés Luque – Executive Producer / (EITB) Aintzane Pérez del Palomar – Co-prod. Commissioning Editor / (ARTE) Ali Delici – Deputy Director – Arts Department / (CAT&Docs) Catherine LeClef-President / (KCETlink MEDIA GROUP) Kim Spencer-Commissioning Editor / (TREELINE DISTRIBUTION) Elena Mera–International Business / (TV3) Jordi Ambrós–Commissioning Editor / (AL JAZEERA) Mohammed Belhaj–EP of In House Production|Production Department / (RADIO CANADA) Jean Pelletier–Senior Director-TV News Information / (MOVISTAR+) Cristina Merino- Head of Non-fiction Selection / (RTBF) Isabelle Christiaens-Commissioning Editor / (NHK Japan Broadcasting Corp.) Nacamoto Hidetoshi-Senior Producer-Global Content Development Division. Commissioning Editor NHK World Documentary / (DISCOVERY CHANNEL / SCIENCE CHANNEL) Jon Bardin– Vice President, Documentaries & Specials / (TG4) Proinsias Ní Ghrainne-Commissioning Editor. In individually-tailored meetings of approximately 15 minutes, the Commissioning Editors and producers were able to talk at length with the aim of specifying possible collaboration agreements.
To close the conference, all the sector professionals in attendance enjoyed the closing ceremony and the awarding of the IBAIA and TREELINE Distribution prizes in the KELER space. Marian Fernandez, IBAIA president, presented the IBAIA first prize, consisting of €3,000, to the project Lobster Soup (REC-Grabaketa Estudioa-Axfilms). Elena Mera, meanwhile, presented them with the Treeline Distribution and Festival Consultancy Prize.
It is important for IBAIA, organisers of the Lau Haizetara Documentary Co-Production Forum, to establish spaces to consolidate specialisation and to thus galvanise the production of new quality documentary projects.
