Sheffield Documentary Film Festival wound up on Sunday, with a brief interlude before the Scottish Documentary Film Institute hosts the Edinburgh Pitch on Tuesday and prior to the Edinburgh Film Festival officially kicking off on Wednesday. Filmtastic week. As was probably part of the rational to shift Sheffield to June (which it has wanted to do for almost 4 years), many of the commissioners who’ve come from abroad will also make their way to Edinburgh in the week. How well this plays out over the next fortnight, for ‘decision makers’ and film-makers, we’ll find out once Edinburgh gets under way.

But back to the closing weekend at Sheffield, which hosted a masterclass with Nick Broomfield, and a UK premiere of Hell and Back Again by Danfung Dennis - the movie everyone headed for on Saturday night. It struck me that at both events’ Q and A sessions, the curiosity - when not technical - revolves around the film-maker’s personality: what are the relationships with protagonists; how do they get the access; what are the moral implications at times for a film-maker’s politics?

Dennis’s film is an exquisitely shot work focused on a batallion posted 18 kilometres inside ‘enemy’ lines in Afghanistan, and more specifically on Sergeant Nathan Harris, badly wounded and recuperating back in North Carolina. This is Dennis’s first film; his background is as a war photographer, which results in a filmic aesthetic more often found in grand cinema than an on-the-hoof documentary.  Careful composition, stunning resolution and a shallow depth of field combine to take us a long way from the rather garish grain of the low-budget video look. The result is extraordinary considering that Dennis was a solo operator and his rig was a Canon 5D stills camera with a boom and radio mic combined and balanced on a monopod. As a man of slight build and quiet personality projection, that he was inches from where bullets and incendiary devices landed made one aware of the physicality of such film-making. But it also explained the film’s visceral impact: immediacy ensures the powerful imagery because the decision-making and shot-taking are simultaneously in his hands. Broomfield, in commenting on footage caught for Soldier Girls, pointed out that capturing extraordinary moments is about trust between collaborators – there often just isn’t time for discussions with crew when drama kicks off. He cites an example of a crew member being practically assaulted by Sarah Palin security when they were ejected from a meeting: Broomfields’s camera people were so freaked that they couldn’t shoot. For him, what happens on the way to filming is where the story is, so you need to know that the cameras will keep rolling, whatever happens. And as Dennis illustrated, at times with very graphic footage, backing off is not what he does at any point.

And this brings us to the issue of politics. Dennis side-steps them - the story is very much from the soldiers’ viewpoint. This does leave the Afghanistan sequences rather untethered, notwithstanding an instance of jaw-dropping irony delivered by an officer during one of many contretemps with Afghan villagers. He expressed the hope, in the course of a hearts and minds talk, that the villagers - whose homes and fields they’re trampling through or squatting in - will come in time to consider him a village leader. But US imperialism aside, there’s also the politics of editorialising, and Dennis included a scene of a horrifically wounded man (from a 100 hours of footage shot), which he said was necessary in order to represent the brutal reality of war. But this was an Afghan member of the platoon, and as this was a battalion who had lost 13 men in total, the sub-text of the question asked of Dennis was; would he have shown a US soldier in similar circumstances? The death of an American early in the film was respectfully unintruded upon.

Broomfield was dealing with politics of a different kind in The Leader, His Driver and His Wife – the latter two characters apartheid supporters, even if not of the venality of Eugene Terre’Blanche, ‘The Leader’ in this case. Broomfield maintained that it’s the place and time of a person’s birth which determines their politics – so there but for the grace of God go all of us. Broomfield’s intolerance is of dishonesty, or a subject window dressing their own representation on camera; generally his moral compass points to non-judgement. In relation to access, Dennis needed to clear a mountain of bureaucracy to get access to the platoon – Broomfield, one sensed, would get it with sheer force of will. I wouldn’t like to be up against Broomfield in a war of anything: I know who would win. But Broomfield is engaging and fun, and I imagine that the bug-eyed innocent face he deploys when in trouble with either his producer or Heidi Fleiss oils many a cranky cog in the production process.

Amateur: barely a few letters from Auteur - but what, in our social media world, is the difference? If there was a dividing line of the 51st Krakow Film Festival, it was between the crowed-sourced YouTube world of Life in a Day and the personal journeys of documakers turning their lives and experiences into art. Less a debate between high and low art, as between the home movie and the knowingly crafted self-expose. 

The journey of Daniela Creutz as her fiance arranged the wedding of his sister in Kashmir in Arranged Happiness. Thor Ochsner's award winning debut film 1989: When I was five years old, about the loss of his father in a tragic car crash as a child. Bente Milton and Mikkel Stolt's Second Life psychosis and recovery tale in My Avatar and Me (which demands its own review and discussion). 20 years of home movies for an Italian teenager-turned-IBM executive who reluctantly concedes to being the reincaration of a famous Buddhist lama, claiming a prince-like life as the guru to hundreds of thousands of Tibettans in Jennifer Fox's My Reincarnation (which just became the fourth highest earning film on Kickstarter). Wojciech Staroń's Argentinian Lesson - widely hailed as a masterpiece, picked up four prizes about transplanting his family to Argentina to teach Polish. All people turning their life and personal circumstances into art - a more informed version of something online video uploaders do every day, without the gala premieres.

So, tho it was decried by some, Life In a Day, winner of the Audience Award, was an appropriate opener, I thought - like an extended trailer for the buffet of global human experience that the rest of the festival was serving up. It might have played a bit like an advert for an airline company (produced by one of Europe's biggest commercials companies, funded by Google) but it seemed to open the festival with that key question - who is a documaker? Is it simply the one with a camera who knows how to edit out the dross and emphasise the good? Or is it one who went to film school or who has the most Twitter followers or Vimeo views? And in a world where any human story can be repurposed as art, at what point does the artist become mosquito, their lens sucking the honesty out of a raw stretch of life for quick fame, views or laughs? I'm not sure I trust the anonymous trolls of the internet to handle that one. Potentially not just commodification of self, to quote Adam Curtis quoting Carmen Hermosillo's (shatteringly brilliant) Pandora's Vox essay, but commodification of friends, family and intimate personal history.

[Some filmmakers I spoke to disliked the way the film was cut - and we agreed it would be good if the films were in a pool where differerent people could cut together stories from that day. Then a few days ago YouTube partnered with Creative Commons to offer the remix friendly licenses to uploaders for the first time, making such collaborations possible.]

There were other highlights in a more traditional form - Swedish emigre to Poland Magnus von Horn's Without Snow, a short film about brutal Swedish peer-pressure amongst teenagers with tragic consequences; Papparazzi by Piotr Bernaś; a brilliant insight into the life of a super-mosquito, hunting small fry, then Polanski, and finally - in a critical twist - the brother of the President after the Smolensk disaster. Battle for Britain, by husband and wife team Jörg Tittel and Alex Helfrecht, a simple and heartfelt hymn to the hundreds of thousands of Polish who fought in WWII for Britain. Horses and Men, a little long but with a deft cinematographic hand and great music was a tender story about the rehabilitation of American prisoners thru horsemanship. A highlight in the fiction strand for me was Glasgow, from the Wajda Studio, which looked at a single mum left pregnant from a famous Scottish footballer - a reference, perhaps, to the curious Scottish law that lets a man who refuses to put his name on the birth certificate to be absolved of all parental and financial responsibility. A relative newcomer to Polish cinema, retrospectives of the Norman McLaren-esque animator Piotr Kamler, and Woyjeck Wiszniewski revealed talents I was unaware of. Wiszniewski's work in particular made me want to quit the world of html and pick up a camera again - his silent jazz-pulsing informational against heart disease 'Heart Attack was both brilliant - like a cross breed of Vertov and Goddard - and disquieting, given it was this that killed him at 34.

The city

It was my first time in Krakow and Poland, the home of my grandfather, and the source of my strongest memory of cinema inspiration, watching the Three Colours trilogy back-to-back in a cinema in Bradford as a teenager. My impressions could fill an article in itself - it is beautiful, buzzing and quite irresistible.

The office where I booked my apartment was also selling a variety of bubble machines - and this seemed an appropriate metaphor as too long in the old town and it's easy to believe the whole of Poland shares the picturesque fairy tale Disney charm and affluence. It's hard to believe Aushwitz, grave to 1.5 million, is half an hour away, but it's only referred to by tour-guides selling trips alongside the Salt Mines and the mountains. The filmmaker of Descrendo, about a camp but likeable nursing assistant in an old people's home, was apparently warned that a film with a gay character would never win an award, and the walls sported the odd swastika. But it is perhaps unfair to make too much of this in a country that is but a few decades out of a repressive and brutal regime, bedrocked in Catholicism and struggling to position itself in the centre of Europe amidst the onslaught and lure of free market capitalism, when centuries of foreign invasions have culminated in an endless round of stag parties, puking and pissing their way around the city.

Yet despite the cheap flights and drunk stag mobs, culture runs fast thru its veins - stepping off the train, instead of being confronted with a Burger King or WHSmiths, there's rows of second hand book stalls. The impressive new museum of modern art Mocak had opened just before the festival and showed a city with its feet comfortably astride both the past and the future. On the grounds of the Schindler Factory - which has a moving museum about occupied Krakow that is definitely worth a visit - Mocak's launch exhibition is about the reflection of history thru art (you are eerily welcomed with a glowing sign 'Kunst macht frei'). The historical presence of the Schindler factory (a short walk from the grounds of camp that is central to the film), besides a well curated museum digging deeper into the past, coupled with a smart new polished concrete art gallery reflecting this thru the prism of the 21st century. Old and new not battling each other for centre-stage but comfortable side by side - or at least face to face.

And it felt like this was the strength of the festival as well - a festival adapted to the modern age, but not surrendering a focus on great stories told well, to eye catching initiatives. So there was a daily newspaper, a daily video bulletin (remarkably well put together), a pitching forum, industry events, nightly parties, networking, videotheque, a filmmaking challenge (which resulted in the most brilliant four minute film about umbrellas you will ever see), outdoor screenings, a host of prizes presented at a ceremony with a leading Polish jazz band, a beautiful city plastered with posters and banners made from stills from the films, and most importantly, a big programme of cinema you will probably never see on TV or at your local 'plex. It's not perfect but it was gimmick-free and unashamedly cultural and human-centered. And my week in the city soon became two - thanks in part to the good company of fellow Man City fan James Hopkin and a sense that you could spend months exploring the city. It was an overdue and much needed reminder of the pleasures of being part of Europe and I left feeling recharged - I should have listened to Laurence Boyce before (it was his eighth festival) and got myself there years ago.

The awards are listed after the jump.

Sheffield Doc/Fest wound up on Sunday night after 5 full-on days. Capturing a flavour of the event overall did mean sacrificing time spent in screenings, but I caught two films up for a Special Jury Award; Clio Barnard’s The Arbor (premiered at London Film Festival in October) and Jeff Malmberg’s Marwencol (premiering in the UK at Sheffield).

Neither won, although Barnard’s film did get the Innovation Award also on offer. Being a fusion of doc and drama exploring the life of playwright Andrea Dunbar, it was fascinating and effective in its lip-synch acting device. But it didn’t have me seeping tears during the Q and A as Malmberg’s Marwencol did.

Every frame of this beautiful film locks you into the delicate, inspired and utterly novel world of its protagonist Mark Hogencamp, a man who was beaten so badly outside a bar in Kingston, New York state, the resulting brain damage largely knocked out memories of his life prior to the attack.

After scant rehabilitation – the reality of US health insurance - Mark builds a miniature Belgian town, ‘Marwencol’, which becomes the site of a WW2 fantasy-scape populated by Action Men and Barbies. He creates and photographs endless scenarios, including SS sieges and Barbie cat-fights in the local bar (called Hogencamp’s of course). The dolls here represent Mark and the people in his life, including his attorney and the married neighbour he has a crush on, Colleen, whose name he utters in sighs. Meanwhile, his mother is a James Bond Pussy Galore doll, and it is this suspension of reality and its simultaneous connection to the narrative of Mark’s new life that makes his story a fabulous balance of creativity as therapy and the sublimely cockeyed. This Action Man- scaled world isn’t surreal and it isn’t ironic; instead we’re witnessing play as a life-affirming force. And it is the compassion the film brings, with humour and a deep respect for Mark, resurfacing into the ‘real’ world disabled and managing PTSD, that tilts Marwencol into the realm of the rather special.

Rather than extraordinary lives, it is the very ordinary that director Kevin Macdonald is seeking for his Life in a Day project, inspired by the 1930s Mass Observation social research organisation. However, this time it’s the entire planet, not just Britain he’s hoping to get on board. As a crowd-sourced movie it confounded expectations around user-generated content on a couple of levels. A million dollars isn’t exactly budget documentary, but it was all needed. With footage from 197 countries, it turned out to be the Byzantine admin and huge translation costs which were the main budget-munchers.

And the quantities of everything involved are eye-watering: 81,000 video clips making up 4,500 hours of footage shot in 60 different frame rates. Tackling this were 24 ratings deciders who whittled down the work pain passed on to Macdonald. He saw a couple of hundred hours of footage (only the 4 or 5 star stuff) but Joe Walker, his editor, saw it all. It’s a web project all right, but not the hand-knitted, cottage industry endeavour You-tube - sponsored by LG to host the project - is normally used to.

They also concede content was pretty US-centric as that’s where they got most clips from. Even spending £45,000 on 470 cameras for poorer countries still didn’t get round the problem of people not conceptually getting the film-yourself narrative.

"Us westerners might think we’re endlessly fascinating, but not all cultures share the west’s capacity for online narcissism."

If you want to meet documentary filmmakers from around the globe, Sheffield Documentary Film Festival is the place to be. The 17th year of the event kicked off on Wednesday evening with the UK premier of Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work. Interviewed yesterday by the chair of the Festival, Steve Hewlett, Ms Rivers replied to the loaded question - ‘why did she make the film?’ – with the pithy, ‘because they asked me to’. La Rivers acknowledged herself she will grasp the opportunities for exposure whatever their form, and, as the subject of a documentary film, sanctioned the all-access  footage of her life now available for an audience.

If access to Joan Rivers was a key element of that film’s success, it is also one of the defining USPs of this Sheffield event. However, filmmakers are here for access , not to celebrities, but to the people who commission, distribute, fund, buy and sell documentaries. The Who’s Who session on day one was an opportunity to ‘meet’, in a panel formation, the people coming from around the globe (24 different countries) seeking documentary fodder to develop, co-produce or buy.

This event, lasting an hour and a half, was a fast-paced, minute-per-speaker intro to these Decision Makers, all available between 9am and 6pm over the course of the festival (which winds up on Sunday) for chats, pitches and ear-bending. Delegates were cutely but firmly warned no pitching or chasing of decision makers outside hours or in the loos. Each ‘turn ‘ succinctly  informed the crowd of what they did precisely and what they were looking for. Delegates were advised to do their homework and target their proposals to the appropriate person.

Beyond the stats of the £14million in sales negotiated at last year’s MeetMarket - where pre-selected projects are offered scheduled meetings with financiers and mentors - a reason to be at Sheffield if you’re not quite at the deal-cutting stage is the nature and feel of the event. Consensus (from a well-researched pool of two) was that Sheffield works for documentary filmmakers because of the culture it operates within: welcoming, casual, sociable. It’s easy to approach people, and the vibe is one of access and connection. Even one of the decision makers at the Who’s Who made a plea for a relaxed approach to pitching and project schedules. The implication is, even if deals are not cut here and right now, there’s still time. And as the Festival shifts to a June slot in 2011, it won’t be such a wait to update what may get off the ground here between the 3rd and 7th of November.

Gurinder Chadha has had a long career directing very successful films since her breakthrough with 1994’s Bhaji on the Beach.

In an industry that is notoriously slanted to male and middle class she has managed to maintain a steady career giving opportunities to Indian actors to have choice parts that rarely come to those working in movies and television (see Eastenders and Coronation street for racial stereotyping). While riding the Asian wave with such artists as Talvin Singh and the Goodness Gracious team there is still under representation in the media and a lack of diversity to bring a new generation of artists. Hit films like Bend it Like Beckham and It’s a Wonderful Afterlife bring to the mainstream Indian culture and mannerisms with all their eccentricities and are funny but Ms Chadha has been treading the same water for the last few films which gives it a samey albeit funny feel. You could say the same about Woody Allen doing the same thing but he is now a poor imitation of himself with a dire catalogue of his last few releases. Her next film should have Indian characters interacting with the British with no self-conscious regard to race, just a bold strong story whether it is drama or comedy. American cinema and television have achieved great success in stories that go beyond gender and race in the strong line-up of television dramas. Getting typecast for these kind of films is not good for the British industry as other Asians who are trying to make it will still be ghettoised and moving into another genre shows diversity and broadening of directorial talents and lets the industry know that diversity can also be a talent thing.

The first London Brazilian Film Festival hit town last week with the warm and vocal audience participation of the city's expat community, and a couple of cinematic gems.

You get the sense that organizers ‘Inffinifo' want to express that there is so much more to Brazil, and it's cinema, than the sex, violence and poverty stereotypes reinforced by its big hits over recent years. However, and despite some works of interest in other areas, it seems that what Brazilian cinema does best - and what it's best filmmakers are doing - is to continue that exploration.  Stories from Brazil's most impoverished communities make for such good cinema because drama is at its most electric when following people in extreme situations.  The more the realist illusion is enhanced through the excellent documentary style techniques of ‘Cinema Novo', the more powerful these extremities appear.

Making this case most clearly was Bruno Barreto's exceptional Last Stop 174 (click for my review) - a fiction inspired by the real life events portrayed in the 2002 documentary ‘Bus 174'.  A gripping story enhanced by high production values and accomplished directing, this more than merits an international release.

Also explosively transporting life in Rio's ghettos to celluloid was Favela On Blast (click for my review).  Propelled forward with the raw exuberance of the music and characters within the clubbing scene in Brazil's favelas, rarely is a documentary so sexy, foul-mouthed and downright fun.

A surprisingly fun and un-indulgent film was ‘Smoking I Wait', in which director Adriana L. Dutra uses her personal attempt to quit smoking as a base from which to explore the history and current state of the tobacco industry.  Well made and engaging, it did suffer from a problem evident in all the documentaries screened at the festival - an overestimation of its own playing time.

Special mentions should go to the crowd pleasing ‘If I were you 2'  and ‘The Childrens Orchestra', though the stageyness of teenage coming of age drama 'Before the World Ends'  only reinforced how well Brazilian's make the type of film that this was not - gritty realist drama's.  Compare it to Walter Salles and Daniela Thomas' excellent ‘Linha De Passe' of last year and this feels a much less successful exploration of similar themes.

A groundbreaking celebration of advanced electronic music, digital media, cutting edge visuals and short film

Alpha-Ville’s ethos is ambitious but focused: to celebrating the relationship between digital media, visual art, short film and music. To achieve this we have teamed up with leading short film label FUTURE SHORTS who will be presenting a selection of short films on the night.