Trends or Traditions? Key Players between Documentary Filmmakers and Audiences
Presented by Documentary Campus
TIME
Monday, August 15th, 2022
17:30 – 18:30 (CET)
LOCATION
Hotel Europe Atrium
How is the rapidly changing documentary industry influencing strategies in film sales, curation, acquisition, means of distribution, screening and launch strategies, to name just a few of the areas that professionals situated between filmmakers and audiences have as their core expertise? What exactly is transforming and which new strategies are in the making? How do sales agents, distributors, aggregators and film festivals define and develop their current roles in this context and in a world with increased uncertainties? For documentary professionals change is inevitable. Yet, the speed at which things shift, calls for our additional attention and reflection.
Speakers
- Mads Mikkelsen - Head of Programme, CPH:DOX / DK
- Sophie Bourdon - Head of Industry, Visions du Réel, International Film Festival Nyon / CH
- Thierry Detaille - Distributor, Visible Film/Belgian Docs / BE
- Vincent Lucassen - Aggregator, Under the Milky Way / AT
Moderated by
- Gitte Hansen - Consultant / Denmark
MADS K. MIKKELSEN
MADS K. MIKKELSEN is Head of Programme at CPH:DOX - Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival, where he has been working since 2009. Besides the festival, he runs various parallel screening series and cinema clubs, teaches film history at the Danish Film School, and is a frequent contributor to local and international magazines and publications about film. In 2018, he published his first book about cinema. At the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, he received an award for his work as a programmer from Festival de Cannes - Marché du film and Screen International.
VINCENT LUCASSEN
VINCENT LUCASSEN was born in the Netherlands. He studied sociology at the University of Wageningen and worked as a lobbyist in Brussels. After finishing his study at the Media Academy in Hilversum, he moved to Vienna where in 2001, together with Ebba Sinzinger, he set up the production company WILDart FILM. That same year he co-founded dok.at, the Association for Austrian documentary film. In 2004, he created DocuZone Austria – a collaboration between rights holders to promote films in the current digital age. DocuZone was part of the world’s first international digital cinema network: CinemaNet Europe. In 2011, Vincent joined Under The Milky Way, where he now works as a film aggregator for Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe, the Baltics, Russia and Turkey.
THIERRY DETAILLE
With a journalism and mass communication PhD and a European MD in film writing and analysis, THIERRY DETAILLE was a radio and printed press reporter. In 1997, he initiated Belgian Documentary Indies’ export catalog Ventes-CBAWIP-Sales (now Belgian Docs), bringing new content onto the world map and continuously participating since 1998, in main co-production forums and TV markets in Europe and worldwide. Founding Visible Film in 2014, Thierry opened the path to foreign films, actively taking part in tutoring, decision making and acting as expert in co-production events. Bringing distribution upstream with a dedicated pre-sale action, he has also since 2019, developed Visible Film into an international co-production activity, bringing Belgian tax shelter financing to the table. He is President of ECAD – European Coordination of Audiovisual Distributors.
SOPHIE BOURDON
SOPHIE BOURDON is the new Head of Industry at Visions du Réel (VdR), International film Festival Nyon (CH). Over the course of her 25-year-long career, she has been a facilitator in the European and international film industry, building bridges and matching professionals across borders and continents, mostly involved in international sales, co-productions, festivals and training. Among other responsibilities, she had been the head of open doors and advisor for Industry Developments at Locarno Film Festival until the summer 2022, chief executive of the European organization ACE Producers (from 2000 to 2011) and head of international sales at MK2 (from 1994 to 2000), highlighting works by established filmmakers such as Claude Chabrol, Michael Haneke, Krzysztof Kieslowski, Abbas Kiarostami, Mohsen and Samira Makhmalbaf, Jonathan Nossiter. Before entering the film industry, she started her professional career as a PR person for L’oreal and then as a director of publicity for the American agency DMB&B Paris. She studied English Literature, Communication and Cinema at Paris X and CSUF in California. She is a Member of the European Film Academy.
GITTE HANSEN
GITTE HANSEN is a film consultant with more than 25 years of experience in the international documentary field with focus on the development, production, financing and distribution of films with potential beyond national borders. Gitte is currently a committed mentor for the co-production training-scheme Close-Up and serves at film institutes and workshops as mentor, tutor, or expert. Significantly, Gitte works with production companies as individual consultant, with a background as executive producer of more than 20 international documentaries and series for First Hand Films, where she was deputy director and headed sales and acquisitions for many years. Campus Istanbul just completed its first edition with Gitte as Head of Studies between 2021 and 2022. Gitte holds a Master in Film and Rhetoric from the University of Copenhagen.