
[Morgan Spurlock kicked off this year's Sheffield Doc/Fest last night with the Opening Night screening of POM WONDERFUL PRESENTS THE GREATEST MOVIE EVER SOLD. Photo by Michelle Heighway from the Sheffield Doc/Fest Flickr page.]
With the inaugural summer edition of Sheffield Doc/Fest now up and running, it's past time to run an interview that we did in the last couple of weeks with Sheffield's Head Programmer Hussain Currimbhoy.
We were curious about how the switch to summer changed his programming process (particularly since he just did this last November) and asked him to tip off some titles from this year's programme.
We just arrived in the UK and are about to head up to Sheffield (once our bag catches up with us). We'll have more about this year's festival in the coming days.
All these wonderful things: First, I want to ask you about the the logistics of changing to June and how it affected your programming practices. Were there films that you saw for November but you told the filmmakers, we want to hold off on showing this until June? And how important were festivals like Sundance or SXSW in terms of putting potential films on your radar?
Hussain Currimbhoy: There were some titles I was eye-balling, stalking if you will, starting from around June 2010. But I knew they would not be ready for November. Because of the new time slot there were a lot of unknowns from a programming point of view. Since I began in 2007 the film submissions season gradually received more and more submissions. We are used to receiving 1200-1500 unsolicited submissions a year and I figured, OK, we might get half of that since we have less time, it's over the Christmas holidays, and despite making plenty of noise about it, some sources might not know we moved to June.
So what happened? We still got well over 1200 films! I admit it was rather... absorbing to get through that many films with the previewers with much less time. But we managed to get some beauties out of the submissions.
Indeed the Sundance and SXSW programmes were vital and ultimately a particularly rich well for us because we could access the films quickly and were able to capitalise on the media buzz and distributor interest the festivals raised for their films. Instant classics like BEATS, RHYMES, LIFE; THE INTERRUPTERS, HELL AND BACK AGAIN, BECOMING CHAZ – these were films I fell in love immediately and I remember just grinning like an idiot all day and feeling over the moon when I confirmed them for Doc/Fest. I also nabbed some glorious docs from Berllinale like BOMBAY BEACH and MAMA AFRICA. Hot Docs and Tribeca Film Festival were also very important to the programming pools.
Securing the films from filmmakers I look up to made me feel like the move to June was working. It felt good and it felt right, you know? It was like asking a really hot girl out, thinking there was little chance she would say yes, then – cut to: having dinner with the really hot girl and feeling like you da man!. As we got bigger, vital and powerful films I realised that this mad move to June was not so mad. it would clearly expand the profile and enhance relevance of Doc/Fest, not just in the UK but internationally. As a programmer what excited me was realising that the possibilities of programming choices seemed fresher, manifold and just more interesting. It was actually invigorating to investigate new veins for films.
ATWT: What's been the best thing about the move so far and has the short window between November's fest and next month's fest been the biggest challenge?
HC: The Doc/Fest team discussed the move to June quite some time before we announced it, so we were all mentally prepared – that is the most important thing when one embarks on an endeavour like this! The mental energy was there, but the body was saying: dude, read a book, please! It was hard to find the energy to start viewing so soon as the festival can knock it out of you for weeks after ward. That was perhaps the hardest thing for me - going straight back into vewing after November. I opened submissions right after the festival and found myself glued to the screen(s) while reassessing what filmmakers schedules were. I was on annual leave too in December, that really didn’t help the work load!
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