NEWS
The fifth edition of the Docúpolis festival closes the call for entries with great success and high expectations
The fifth edition of the International Documentary Film Festival of Barcelona, Docúpolis’05, broke a new record of participation with more than 700 inscriptions from all over of the world.
Five years ago, Docúpolis called for entries for the first time, with the objective to receive work from documentary film-makers, who are looking for creative as well as economic acknowledgement. Docupolis offers a dialog with directors, producers, critics or just interested people who all fight for the survival of a genre that every time gets more supporters. This passion for documentaries becomes evident in the level of participation, that in five years, has more than doubled.
Also, with respect to the participating countries, the continuous presence of work coming from the five continents, maintain the international character, that makes up the festival. Productions from more than 50 countries participate in the festival: form Nicaragua, Cuba or Mexico, over Australia, India, Philippines, China or the Republic of Azerbaijan, followed by northern countries like Denmark, Finland or Sweden, by the southern like South Africa, Morocco to and the neighbouring countries like France, Italy, England or Portugal. As usual the Spanish participation was the highest, followed by Latin-American and Central-European. However, the increase of participation of directors from East-Europe and the Middle – East (Israel and Iran) has to be pointed out. Therefore, it is not surprising, that Docúpolis’05 has become a good platform to experience impressions from all over the world, where hardly accessible realities are to be discovered.
Within the different sections that make up the International Competition of the Festival, 431 documentaries have participated in the category for Best Documentary, 133 in the category for Best Short Documentary and 140 in the category for Opera Prima.
The films will be evaluated by a jury specialised in the theme: the versatile as well was multimedia expert Chema Alvargonzález; the creative idealist and producer of Área de Televisión Oriol Porta; the documentary film-maker and professor of the UPF Ricardo Íscar; the visual artist, lecturer, critic, commissioner and historian Joan Fontcuberta; the documentary director of Canal 33 of Catalonian Television Antoni Tortajada; the historian of cinematography and programmer of BTV Joaquim Romaguera; the video- artist, audiovisual-composer and lecturer at the UAB Jacobo Sucari; the exposition commissioner, lecturer at the IDEP, director and organizer videographic and cinematographic shows Julián Álvarez and the historian of cinematography, lecturer and collaborated in different Spanish universities Josetxo Cerdán.
Docúpolis’05 will proceed from the 5th to the 9th of October 2005 in the Centro de Cultura Contemporánea de Barcelona in: calle Montalegre, 5.