DOKU.ARTS Film Festival
Fourth Edition of the Event Dedicated to Documentaries about Art
Jun 11, 2009
DOKU.ARTS International Festival for Films on Art opens today, June 11, 2009. During the four-day event, around 30 documentaries about art and artists will be screened in the Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.
Now in its fourth year, the festival comprises a mix of new works, most of which will be shown for the first time in the Netherlands, and relevant older works from the Filmmuseum’s extensive historic collection.
Filmmakers' Fascination with Art
Filmmakers, both new and established, have long been fascinated with portraying artists and capturing the creative process. Festival organizers are adamant, however, that there is more to DOKU.ARTS than the screening of traditional bio-pics. Rather, it is a platform for creative documentaries with intrinsic artistic value that are ignored or receive limited attention at the major documentary film festivals, as well as cinematic essays, compilations and tributes that are slowly being cut from public broadcasting channels.
Focus on Architecture
The program contains documentaries that cover the visual arts, the performing arts, music, cinema and literature. However, the theme of this edition of the festival is architecture, a reference to the building of the new Filmmuseum in North Amsterdam, which starts this year.
Around a third of the documentaries in the program relate specifically to the theme. These include Rem Koolhaas – A Kind of Architect (Markus Heidingsfelder and Min Tesch, 2005) and Koolhaas HouseLife (Ila Bêka and Louise Lemoîne, 2008). Both films are about the iconic Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas, but the former focuses more on the man and the influences that have shaped him (interestingly, Koolhaas started studying scriptwriting at the Dutch Film School); while the latter is a humorous look at his work, in particular Maison à Bordeaux, a house he designed in France in 1998, shown to us by the housekeeper.
Also noteworthy is Russian Ark (Aleksandr Sokurov, 2002), an extraordinary feat of cinematic choreography. Not only does it take the viewer through 300 years of Russian history, played out in 35 halls of the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, the 99-minute movie was filmed in a single take and so unfolds in real time. Several shorts by the prolific Belgian filmmaker and this year’s honorary guest, Agnès Varda, also focus on architecture.
The History of DOKU.ARTS
DOKU.ARTS was founded in 2006 in Berlin, Germany by filmmaker Andreas Lewin as a means of covering art in a way he considered to be missing from other media or journalistic outlets. After two editions in Berlin, the festival moved to Amsterdam in 2008, where it is hosted by the Filmmuseum.
The festival, which organizers say is the only one of its kind in Europe, is non-competitive, but all the films’ directors are invited to attend the screening of their film. Q&A sessions, moderated by Dutch art and film critics, and seminars about documentary filmmaking form an important part of the event.
DOKU.ARTS runs from June 11 -14. Further location and program details can be found on the festival’s website.
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