DOCUMENTA MADRID 08

The 5th International Documentary Film Festival of Madrid will be held from May 2 through 11.

The festival has broken a record in the number of films participating, with a total of 999 films, coming from more countries than in previous years.

The festival's 5th year renders tribute to Michelangelo Antonioni and his revolutionary revision of cinematographic narration—his least known identity, as a documentary-maker.

The Arts Department of the city of Madrid is organizing the 5th annual International Festival of Documentary Film DOCUMENTA MADRID 08, which will be held from May 2 through 11. The increasing success with the public, with more than 12,700 spectators in its fourth year; the increase in films received for competition to the Competitive Sections - 999 films this year, a hundred more than in 2007 - and the variety in the origin of these films - from 79 different countries - have made Documenta Madrid one of the most international festivals in our country.

In accordance with this positive assessment, the festival will increase the amount of prize-winnings: 73,000 Euros - 3,000 more than last year-. In addition, this year's competition will include a new award: the Filmotech.com Award, to be awarded 3,000 Euros and a diploma.

Among the new features of this 5th edition, there will also be two new venues added to the already 14 locations. The Casa Árabe opens its doors to the festival in order to broaden the spectrum of films being presented in a competition that has gotten stronger as a window to the world. In addition, the Academy of Arts and Film Sciences will also provide a screening room for Spanish documentaries in the DOCUMENTA section.

DOCUMENTA MADRID 08 will render tribute to Michelangelo Antonioni by revealing the secrets of his documentary work: it will dig deep into the hidden work by well-established filmmakers; we will reveal the adventurous spirit of two explorers from early 20th century who made an impact on the big Hollywood studios with their prodigious incursion in the world of African tribes and it will show how one of today's most prestigious documentary-makers, Nicolas Philibert, shrewdly lets reality pass on by in front of his camera.

DOCUMENTA MADRID 08's calling is to show a selection of international films as a true reflection of the social, cultural, economic, artistic and environmental realities in today's world. In addition, DOCUMENTA MADRID has become an annual meeting point for professionals, audiovisual creators, and audiences eager for new offerings in the genre.

The program for DOCUMENTA MADRID is divided into 3 main blocks: Competitive Sections, Informative Sections, and Parallel Activities. This year, 999 films have been received to take part in the Competitive Sections.

There are five Official Competitive Sections:
Original Documentary Section: in this international section are films demonstrating an original and innovative viewpoint both in formal terms as well as in its subject matter. It is divided into the categories: Full-length films and Short films.

Competition of Reporting: documentary films from all over the world made for film or television, whose content is treated from an informative point of view.

National Competition: a section created for the purpose of making a special place for Spanish-made productions, also divided up into the categories Short Films and Full-length films.

Avid Xpressate/HP Marathon: meant for the filmmakers of any of the selected films in any of the three competitive sections who would like to participate by using Avid equipment and support to create and edit a short film on a topic to be selected the day the marathon begins. The resulting films will then be screened at one of the different competition venues.

Filmotech.com: DOCUMENTA 08 will come to life online, beyond just its official web page, through a groundbreaking initiative. The filmmakers of works in the Competitive Sections who wish to do so may upload their films onto the internet so that they can be downloaded with all legal guarantees from anywhere on the planet. Those directors who opt for this method will compete for the Filmotech.com Award.

Intimate Elegies: Open-Hearted Cinema Dissected by its Masters

As part of the Informative Sections, this film series is of notable importance as it goes through film history, from its beginnings to the present day from the point of view of its creators. The affinities established among filmmakers from different eras or different cultures is one of the curiosities revealed by films such as Roads to Kiarostami (2006), a different journey by Abbas Kiarostami in the development of his work-; JLG/JLG: Autoportrait de décembre (1995), by Jean-Luc Godard - a profound reflection on the seventh art-; Il giorno della prima di 'Close Up' (1996) - in which Nanni Moretti watches over the preparations for the premiere of the film Close Up by Kiarostami-; and Filming 'Othello' (1978) - in which Orson Welles uses footage shot during the preparation of the film to make a curious film essay.

Other major filmmakers who stand out in this series include Ingmar Bergman (Karins ansikte, 1984); Wim Wenders (Tokyo-Ga, 1985); Peter Tscherkassky (Outer Space, 1999); José Luis Guerin (Innisfree, 1989); Federico Fellini (Block-notes di un regista, 1969) and Chris Marker (Une journée d'Andrei Arsenevitch, 2000).

Tribute to Michelangelo Antonioni: The Desolate Filmmaker.

DOCUMENTA 08 renders tribute to Michelangelo Antonioni (1912-2007), member of an unrepeatable generation of Italian filmmakers including Vittorio de Sica, Luchino Visconti, Roberto Rossellini and Federico Fellini, who exploited film's possibilities to show reality in a unique way. The Ferrara-born director stood out for his brave redefinition of the narrative concept of film by breaking with established norms to tell a story on film. DOCUMENTA MADRID 08 will render tribute to Antonioni by showing the curiosities of his documentary work.

Antonioni was capable of telling, evoking and suggesting just through a silent succession of meticulously-framed and austere images. His photographic eye and his ability to extract beauty and meaning with the framing have few equals in film history. The Italian director tried to "photograph the surface of things and discover what is hidden within them" by creating phantasmagoric surroundings in which the characters wandered as fleeting figures of absence. In his minimalist style, he portrayed solitude and isolation, the enigma of a desolate world, everything that Antonioni himself defined as "incomunicabilitá", which is present in documentaries such as Gente del Po (1943-1947); Sette canne, un vestido (1949); Kumbha Mela (1989); Noto-Mandorli Vulcano-Stromboli Carnevale (1992) and Lo Sguardo di Michelangelo (2004), one of his last works, which won the International Critic's award in the Short Film Section of the

Another one of the series in the Parallel Section of this year's Documenta Madrid is Martin and Osa Johnson: or the adventure of documentary-filmmaking.

When "Cannibals of the South Seas" was released on July 21, 1918 in New York, the marriage of Martin (1884-1937) and Osa Johnson (1894-1953) was turned into a star marriage. It was the first film made by the two adventurer filmmakers, naturalists and photographers, who spent more than twenty years traveling around the Salomon Islands, Borneo, and the African continent in the style of the old discoverers of unexplored paradises.

They were the precursors of ethnological documentary-making; they made the first sound film made completely in Africa; they used the airplane for the first time to film wildlife and the snow-capped peaks of Kilimanjaro and they were pioneers in getting into to the savage and hostile tribes of the Southern Seas and Borneo. Their goal was to distance themselves from the style of Hollywood by showing the true life of the indigenous communities and the virgin scenery, though they were also the first ones to use their own work for merchandising and sponsoring their adventures.

The result of all this were thousands of photographs, travel books, and most of all, documentaries to be shown at the festival such as Wonders of the Congo (1931), Congorilla (1932), Wings Over Africa (1934) and Baboona (1935). The Martin and Osa Johnson SAFARI Museum, created in what was their house in Chanute (Kansas), keeps the story and legacy alive of these last pioneers, whose film contributed in a decisive way to the forging of that period's imagination (in full swing due to the colonial empires) for the last unexplored places on the planet uncovered by intrepid adventurers.

Nicolas Philibert: Intuitive Observer of Reality

The documentaries by the French filmmaker Nicolas Philibert show the intuition of a camera operator who follows the most real of all shooting schedules, that of the passing of events themselves. There is no prior screenplay nor is there exhaustive documentation; the key is simply in the curiosity that he feels for the story he is filming. This retrospective, made in collaboration with the French Institute of Madrid and the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, offers a trip through these snippets of life from the hand of one of today's most prestigious directors.

Philibert, whose biggest success has been Être et avoir (2002), the film which established him by winning awards at numerous festivals (SEMINCI, European Films Awards, Cesar Awards of France and nominated at the BAFTA Awards) and acclaimed by the public all over the world, made his debut in film in 1978 with La voix de son maître (co-directed with Gérard Mordillat), and after a less productive period beyond some commissioned documentary on mountaineering and other sports, he submerged himself in more personal projects.

This showing of films by the French director, who will soon release his latest film (Regreso a Normandía), will include films such as La ville Louvre (1990) -an incursion into the backrooms of the great Parisian museum and the concept of art; Le pays des sourds (1992) -the experience of a "country" where sign language and silence make up perceive other realities--La moindre des choses (1996) - where the characters are patients in a psychiatric clinic.