Sheffield Doc/Fest

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Sheffield, United Kingdom November 05 - 09, 2008
Call for Entry Deadline: June 30, 2008
Festival Data:
- Established: 1994
- Genre: Documentary (click to see)
- Attendance: 3300
- Media Attendance: 50
- Accredited Industry Attendance: 1236
- Total Number of Films Submitted: 1100
- Total Number of Films Screened: 100
- # of Shorts Screened: 30
- Accreditations: ECFF
- Competitive
- Retrospective
- Film Market
- Online Festival
- Students Section
- Has Panels
- Has Seminars
- Workshops
Festival Website:
http:/ / www.sheffdocfest.com
Festival Description:

Doc/Fest is the UK's leading documentary festival and a must-attend event on the industry calendar. It is where the international documentary family gets together under one roof for a week of intense deal-making, doc watching and debate.

Doc/Fest not only screens and awards films, it has an extensive industry sessions program, an international marketplace, is a front runner in the new media landscape. It is also renowned as a launching pad for film students looking for an entrance into the film industry.The festival was launched as a two pronged event - an international film festival and a conference for all professionals working in documentary film and television production.

The festival is programed by the Director and Programmer in close collaboration with the Board and Advisory Committee, who generously devote their time and knowledge to creating a rich and challenging program each year. It has long been regarded as an event owned by members of the documentary industry, who are well-represented on both the Board and the Committee.

For five days, documentary-loving audiences will experience over 100 new international documentaries showcasing some of the greatest talent working in the genre today. Sheffield Doc/Fest strives to select about 100 documentaries of any length that will form a state-of-the-art view of documentary film making. As each film has its unique qualities it’s hard to sum up general rules Doc/Fest bases its selection on. Rather they would like to include those documentaries bordering on the edges of its genre. The uses of narrative elements, experimental ways of approaching subject or form, new interactive ways to attract an audience makes the genre of documentary more and more appealing and creatively interesting. Apart from new films, Doc/Fest will always feature classic documentaries in special strands or retrospectives on themes and directors.

Apart from screening films, about half the event consists of sessions, pitch competitions and master classes. Sharing experiences and debating the current state of documentary film making is very important next to the experience of watching new and classic, exciting documentary films and having in-depth discussions with directors of films screened.

Film Programme

deadline film submissions: 30 June 2008

2008 film strands include Green Docs, Anti Docs, Bent Docs and Music Docs, as well as a special strand, Regime Change, to coincide with the US Presidential Elections.

Since 2007, Doc/Fest hosts the Grierson: Sheffields - three exciting documentary awards: The Green Award, The Innovation Award and The Youth Jury Award.

International Marketplace

deadline MeetMarket submissions: 12 September 2008

MeetMarket is Sheffield's international marketplace designed to

match independent producers’ most innovate project ideas with UK and international commissioners and other financiers through 20 minute one-on-one meetings. Participants’ feedback gave an extremely positive evaluation of MeetMarket 2007, especially on the effectiveness and efficiency of the new format. In 2007 there were 39 projects from 18 different countries, 88 commissioners, distributors & funders, and 452 pre-scheduled meetings.

deadline Videotheque submissions: 7 August 2008

Films can be entered for the Videotheque – used by the festival industry delegates, television programme buyers, distributors, sales agents and festival programmers.

Sessions Programme

Around forty discussions, masterclasses, workshops and presentations in close co-operation with the industry. Part of the sessions programme is DigiDocs 360 a unique strand of sessions addressing the challenges of embracing the cross platform world.

Crossover UK

Over the course of five days, participants are immersed in a series of activities where the primary goal is the development of project pitches for groundbreaking cross-platform interactive documentary projects. Crossover UK explores the creative and the commercial challenges of developing documentary content and services for digital media.

Student Programme

Newcomers Day is a fantastic and unique opportunity to get into the documentary world: Hear from and meet execs who are hiring, commissioners who are buying and directors who are inspiring the next generation of doc filmmakers. All participants can compete for the BBC placement and current TV commission.

DocDay Afternoon offers hands on surgery on your short documentaries from some of the best mentors in the documentary industry - including directors, editors, sound recordists, camera operators, distributors, television executives and more.
Film Submissions:
- Accepts direct submissions
- Submission formats: Beta-SP, Digi-Beta, 16mm, 35mm, MiniDV, DVCam
- Call for Entry: http:/ / www.sheffdocfest.com/ view/ guidelines

Email:	info(at)sidf.co.uk
Phone:	(44) 0 114 276 5141
Fax:	(44) 0 114 272 1849
Mailing Address:	The Workstation 15 Paternoster Row Sheffield S1 2BX UK

Enter Your Post

DEC 10, 2007 05:38PM FFW Festival Editor writes:

Sheffield Doc/Fest is delighted to announce the winners of the first Grierson: Sheffield awards.

These new British documentary awards have three categories: The Green Award, The Youth Jury Award and The Innovation Award.

it’s the first time the Grierson Trust has given awards in Sheffield. After wading through an impressive number of submissions, the jury finally made their decision.

The winner of The Green Award, a single documentary that has contributed to the climate change debate, is Davis Guggenheim’s "An Inconvenient Truth" the acclaimed environmental doc linked to Al Gore.

The Innovation Award a documentary that exhibits innovation in style or content was awarded to Mark Craig’s "Talk to Me" a quirky documentary about voicemail messages.

The Youth Jury Award, the award recognizes films that are engaging for young audiences and was chosen by a jury of young people aged 16-18 years, chaired by a member of the Grierson Trust. After much deliberation, the jury chose "We Are Together" a moving story about orphans living in South Africa and their passionate for music.

Spokesperson for the youth jury said: 'The films moved and inspired us and taught us something about other young people in parallel cultures to our own. We never imagined that we would be able to empathize and relate so strongly to the young people who appeared in Baghdad High. For these reasons, we would like to recommend the film. However, no film touched us as much or made as great an impact as the winning film "We Are Together."'

Heather Croall, festival director said: ‘The awards have been a tremendous success. The quality of the entries was high, making it a hard job for the jury. The winning films represent innovative methods of production and storytelling and capture the imagination of a youth audience.’

Roger Graef, patron of the Grierson Trust is delighted with the response: 'The festival is an ideal place to celebrate the achievements in documentaries amongst a talented collection of peers. Who have all devoted themselves to using documentaries to inform the world about what’s going on in our immediate horizons. The winners are a strong field of candidates that reflect that concern vividly.'

The 2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest was the most success yet with over 1200 delegates traveling from all over the world to attend the 5-day event.
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DEC 10, 2007 05:35PM FFW Festival Editor writes:

2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest Hightlights

1236 delegates descended on Sheffield this year - exceeding all our expectations! The atmosphere was electric with many sessions and screenings full to bursting - in particular, the Who's Who session was packed with people standing at the back and Kim Longinotto's interview one of the hottest tickets.
The Friday night party was enormous with several well known industry figures taking to the stage in excitement at the Carwash classic 'We Are Family'. Saturday night saw a fabulous interview of one of two popular doc presenters attending Doc/Fest 2007 - Louis Theroux gave a very entertaining evening to delegates and Sheffield public alike. That was followed by the inaugral Grierson:Sheffield awards and a lovely party hosted by some of our international sponsors - thanks must go to them, The Plug and Lost Vagueness who gave us a party to remember!
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DEC 10, 2007 05:31PM FFW Festival Editor writes:

Another Successful Year and Competition Awards for the 2007 Sheffield Doc/Fest

The organizers of Sheffield Doc/Fest are celebrating after welcoming over 1200 industry delegates from as far away as Japan and Australia to Sheffield. The Festival, which screened over 100-documentary over five days, was the most successful event in its fourteen-year history.

Heather Croall, festival director said: ‘The international reputation of the Festival has grown immensely over the last 12 months and the increase in delegates confirms this. The opening night film Joy Division went down a storm, we had two simultaneous screenings just to cope with the crowd. Sheffield and the Yorkshire region have grown to recognize what a great event they have on their doorstep. Our hard work over the last 18 months to grow the Cross Platform business opportunities for Yorkshire is paying off.’

As always, Doc/Fest offers established and first time filmmakers the opportunity to win funding and gain expert advice from industry experts.

The winners of the 2007 competitions are:

During the Channel 4 Pitch, six new directors competed in front of a panel of television executives, to win the chance to make a 24-minute film for Channel 4's documentary new talent strand. The winner, Anoop Pandhal will receive a 10-week freelance placement at a production company to make the film, on a budget of £45,000, which includes a £5,000 director's bursary.

For the third year running, Doc/Fest hosted the Sky One Development Prize. Sky One invited production companies to pitch their ideas for a new documentary series or factual entertainment series aimed primarily at adults for the 10pm Sci-Fi slot. Winner Patrick McGradey from Wave Length Films was awarded £5,000 for his idea World Wide Weird, an innovative witty take on the wilder conspiracy theories about the internet.

Filmmaker Daniel Dewsbury won the BBC New Talent competition with his impressive pitch about two aspirant skaters and their rivalry as they compete to be the first British Olympic competitors. He wins a nine-month placement with the BBC.

Current TV the first TV network created by, for and with young adults, ran a competition in which eight lucky individuals got a chance to pitch live to a panel of Current TV executives. The winner was Mateo Willis with a film about multi-religious commune in Northern Italy. He wins £1000 to make his film, along with the promise of additional commissions.

For the first time Doc/Fest, added two Cross Platform competitions to the line up, aimed at finding factual ideas that would work across a range of media platforms.

The Crossover Lab Pitch Competition saw documentary makers and content producers pitch ideas they’d created while on a five-day Doc/Fest creative laboratory earlier in the year. The winners were Diarmid Scrimshaw Warp Films, Anna Higgs, Quark Films and Tim Morgan, Mint Digital, with their idea Museum of Our Futures a television show, website and gallery installation about contemporary human society and how it might be discussed and perceived in the future.

Doc/Fest also teamed up with the National Film Board of Canada to launch the Cross-Media Challenge a co-production competition for innovative, interactive, socially engaged content with applications for mobile and broadband that offered a £5,000 co-production development deal with the NFB. The winner is Virginia Heath, Vita Nova Films & Quba New Media and her idea My Dangerous Loverboy, a groundbreaking web and mobile site that will raise awareness about global sex trafficking and create a community for at-risk young girls and their wider peer group to tell their stories and offer advice.

Both winners of the Cross Platform competitions are from Sheffield.
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