Shorts programme and Industry Seminars at Guth Gafa
This year both Guth Gafa’s shorts programme and their industry seminar programme explore new forms of documentary. In the 2009 shorts programme, Guth Gafa present an eclectic mix of documentary, animated documentary and video art.
For one of Guth Gafa’s Irish Film Board funded industry seminars on Saturday 13th, a very diverse group of filmmakers, participating in this year’s festival, are presenting their work and their unique approaches to documentary storytelling. Documentary has evolved like no other genre over the last decades from pure cinema direct to essayistic forms, from digital mixed media to collaborative working methods. Digital technologies, new and more playful forms have helped to make documentaries that go way beyond dry journalistic objectiveness, and this should be a very inspiring seminar for all documentary filmmakers.
In the Shorts programme this year, Guth Gafa are showing Tony Donoghue’s multi award-winning animated documentary, A Film from My Parish – 6 Farms, which has screened at over 30 festivals around the world, including Sundance, Telluride and Atlantic Film Festivals. Originally commissioned as an animation under the Irish Film Board’s Frameworks scheme, A Film from My Parish merges documentary and animation seamlessly, and has had equal success at festivals in both genres. Donoghue’s short is also one of the rare Irish short films to be selected for environmental festivals, and so far has screened at 6, and was one of only 23 films selected for competition out of 773 at the prestigious Green Film Festival in Seoul.
Another animated documentary screening this year is Lost Tribes of New York City, another award-winning cross-genre film, by talented US couple Carolyn and Andy London. In this lovely short, the filmmakers interviewed NY city’s more overlooked citizens, and transposed their voices onto inanimate objects. A DIT graduation film, What I am, by Fiona Hynes, also plays with the documentary genre, mixing old public domain animated cartoons with contemporary interviews and material in this strong portrait of one person’s struggle to find an identity outside of the ‘norm’.
A more collaborative form of short film-making screenings at Guth Gafa are the 9 digital stories that were made in a six-month participatory media workshop run by FOMACS (Forum on Migration and Communications), in partnership with Integrating Ireland and Refugee Information Services. The 9 storytellers participated in a collaborative process that integrated storytelling, group and individual reflection, creative writing, photography and the use of multi-media technologies, in order to make a 3-5 minute story about their own experiences as asylum seekers and refugees.
As part of the Africa focus in this year’s festival, Guth Gafa have also commissioned 6 short (1 minute) films from South African visual artists. This is part of a long distance collaborative art project, where filmmakers and artists from all over the world have been invited to send one minute visual pieces – their own ‘Postcards to the Edge’ – to ultimately form part of an online collection of digital shorts.
The Guth Gafa International Documentary Festival runs from the 12th to the 14th June in Gortahork, County Donegal. Excellent weekend packages of 2 nights accommodation and festival passes start from as little as €48. The full festival programme and online booking are available at www.guthgafa.com and further information is available from the Festival office on 074 9180730.
The Guth Gafa International Documentary Festival is supported by The Irish Film Board.