Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival

Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival
	Jihlava IDFF Logo
Location	Jihlava, Czech Republic
Founded	1997
Awards	Opus Bonum
No. of films	310 in 2016
Website	www.dokument-festival.com

Ji.hlava International Documentary Film Festival (Czech: Mezinárodní festival dokumentárních filmů Ji.hlava, in short MFDF Ji.hlava or Ji.hlava IDFF) is the largest festival of creative documentary film in Central and Eastern Europe. The festival is traditionally held in late October in Jihlava, Czech Republic. The 21st edition of the festival will take place between 24-29 October 2017.^[1]

The last year's festival screenings were attended by more than 40,000 viewers, and the total number of 4,500 accredited visitors from 62 countries of the world attended the festival. More than 1,000 film professionals took part in the Ji.hlava Industry Programme, which includes projects such as Emerging Producers, Festival Identity or Conference Fascinations. In 2016, the festival presented 310 films.

The festival was founded in 1997 by a group of Jihlava high school students led by Marek Hovorka in charge, who has been the festival director ever since. From 2001 on, the festival has been organised by Jihlava Association of Amateur Filmmakers which was transformed in 2015 into DOC.DREAM - the Association for the Support of Documentary Cinema.

The festival's motto is "Thinking Through Film", the traditional symbol is a funnel.

Ji.hlava IDFF is a co-founder of Doc Alliance - an alliance of 7 key European documentary film festivals.

Programme

Competition Sections

The core of the festival consists of 7 competitions:

Opus Bonum - Best World Documentary Film
Between the Seas - Best Central and Eastern European Documentary Film
Czech Joy - Best Czech Documentary Film
First Lights - Best Debut Documentary Film
Fascinations - Best World Experimental Documentary Film
Fascinations: Exprmntl.cz - Best Czech Experimental Documentary Film
Short Joy - Best Short Documentary Film

Furthermore, the festival nominates one film that is subsequently added to the pre-selection in the European Film Academy (EFA) award for the Best Documentary Film of the Year. Also, the winners of the Short Joy award will be eligible for the pre-selection in Documentary Short Subject category of the Academy Awards (Oscars).

Opus Bonum Award for Best World Documentary Film
Year	Film title	Director	Country of origin
2007	731: Two Versions of Hell	James T. Hong	China, United States, Taiwan
2008	Iraqi Short Films	Mauro Andrizzi	Argentina
2009	Bassidji	Tamadon Mehran	Iran, Switzerland, France
2010	48	Susana de Sousa Dias	Portugal
2011	Lost Land	Pierre-Yves Vanderweerd	Belgium
2012	Kuichisan	Maiko Endo	Japan, United States
2013	The Uprising	Peter Snowdon	Belgium, United Kingdom
2014	I Am the People	Anna Roussillon	France
2015	Dead Slow Ahead	Mauro Herce	Spain, France
2016	Spectres are haunting Europe	Maria Kourkouta, Niki Giannari	France, Greece

Between the Seas Award for Best Central and Eastern European Documentary Film
Year	Film title	Director	Country of origin
2003	66 Seasons	Peter Kerekes	Slovakia
2003	Sentiment	Tomáš Hejtmánek	Czechia
2004	The Ring	Angus Reid	Slovenia
2005	Snail Fortress	Deszo Zsigmond	Hungary
2006	All day together	Marcin Koszalka	Poland
2007	Artel	Simon Semtov, Sergei Loznitsa	Russia
2008	The Flower Bridge	Thomas Ciulei	Romania, Germany
2009	Border	Jaroslav Vojtek	Slovakia
2010	Autobiography of Nicolae Ceausescu	Andrei Ujica	Romania
2011	Bakhmaro	Salomé Jashi	Georgia, Germany
2012	Mirage	Srdan Keca	United Kingdom, Serbia
2013	Winter / Miracle	Gustavo Beck, Zeljka Sukova	Croatia, Denmark, Brazil
2014	We Come As Friends	Hubert Sauper	France, Austria
2015	Under the Sun	Vitaly Mansky	Czechia, Russia, Germany, North Korea
2016	The Dazzling Light of Sunset	Salomé Jashi	Georgia, Germany

Non-competition Sections

Apart from the competitions sections, the festival annually presents number of non-competition sections of various fields of documentary film. The traditional non-competition sections are following:

Doc-fi - a section presenting films that combine documentary and fiction
Reality TV - a section focusing on new television formats and current cross-genre forms, such as docudrama, docusoap, reality show or mockumentary
Czech Television Documentaries - an overview of the documentaries produced by Czech Television
FAMU Presents - a presentation of the FAMU students' works
Transparent Beings - a section presenting works by key figues in the history of documentary films
Transparent Landscape - a cross-section of the documentaries of particular countries

Accompanying Programme

Another feature of the festival is its accompanying programme, comprising thematic exhibitions, awards for the best festival poster, music and theatre performances, authors' readings, radio documentaries and documentary theatres or a special Laboratorium installation.

Guests

In the past years, number of directors, film theorists and historians attended the festival. Apart from the film specialists, Ji.hlava was also visited by various writers, artists or activists.

There is a possibility to meet the guests within Inspiration Forum (Ji.hlava Industry Programme) or Masterclass (non-competition section). Film world personalities are often members of the competition juries (e.g. Between the Seas, Opus Bonum).

1999: Viktor Kossakovsky
2000: Richard Leacock
2001: Jay Rosenblatt
2003: Mike Hoolboom, Tue Steen Müller
2004: Guy Gauthier, Herz Frank, Jean Perret, Hans Joachim Schlegel
2005: Naomi Kawase, Jean-Pierre Gorin, Jean-Pierre Rehm, William Wees
2006: Manoel de Oliveira, François Jost, Khavn de la Cruz
2007: Woody Vasulka
2008: P. Adams-Sitney, Karel Vachek, Alice Lovejoy, Karol Hordziej
2009: Bill Nichols, Jorgen Leth, Amir Labaki
2010: Thomas Elsaesser, John Bok, Luciano Barisone, Guillermo Ruiz
2011: Carlos A. Aguilera, Alexej Pluser-Sarno, Jana Sarna, Basilio Martín Patino, Peter Kubelka, James T. Hong
2012: Tariq Ali, Natalya Gorbanevskaya, Anna Hutsol, Gao Xingjian, Mads Brügger, Jero Yun, Laurens Drillich, Ray Sandeep, Xavier Christiaens
2013: Artemy Troitsky, Šelja Kamerić, Moazzam Begg, Yuriy Norshteyn, Craig Baldwin, Dudley Andrew, Lordan Zafranović, Vitaly Mansky, Eyal Sivan, Kirsten Johnson, Yoshiki Nishimura, Joe Gantz, Bartek Konopka
2014: Joseph Yu-Shek Cheng, Petr Pavlensky, Kateřina Šedá, Godfrey Reggio, Albert Serra, Peter Tscherkassky, Želimir Žilnik, Nicolas Philibert, Deborah Stratman, Wojciech Staroń, Kidlat Tahimik, Jaime Rosales, Bing Wang
2015: Maria Alyokhina, Julian Assange, Osama Abdul Mohsen, Abbas Fahdel, Amra Bakšić Čamo, Daniel Walber, Fred Kelemen, Viera Čakányová, Thomas A. Ostbye, Artavazd Peleshyan
2016: Philip Zimbardo, Mikhail Durnenkov, Cchang Pching, Claire Atherton, Rebecca O’Brien, Mike Bonanno, Martin Kollár, Jacopo Quadri, Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, Fridrik Thór Fridriksson, Bill Morrison

Other Activities

Ji.hlava IDFF organises many activities during the whole year. For example, it cooperates with other European documentary film festivals within Doc Alliance, whose Doc Alliance Films website, devoted to documentary and experimental movie online distribution, is an original project of the festival. It also participates in DOC.STREAM projects for the film professionals, Eastern European documentary East Silver Market, and, in collaboration with the Czech Institute of Documentary Film, the Ex Oriente Film project.

DOC.DREAM, the organiser of the festival, is active also in the publishing field (e.g. Bill Nichols: Introduction to Documentary; Guy Gauthier: Le Documentaire, un autre cinéma; Karel Vachek: The Theory of Matter; David Čeněk: Chris Marker) and runs the online dok.revue portal, dedicated to the theory and criticism of the documentary film.

Ji.hlava Industry Programme

Ji.hlava Industry Programme is a project for the film professionals and has been a significant part of the festival for the past sixteen years. The section includes following programmes and platforms:

Emerging Producers - a promotional and educational project uniting European documentary film producers
Docu Talents @KVIFF (formerly Docu Talents from the East) - a panel presenting the most remarkable authorial documentary projects from Middle and Eastern Europe in the production or post-production phase, annually held at the Karlovy Vary IFF
Festival Identity - a meeting of film festival organisers
Inspiration Forum - a meeting of documentary film directors with personalities out of the film community - scientists, writers, artists or philosophers
Conference Fascinations - a conference focusing on experimental film distribution
Visegrad Accelerator - a platform for meeting of Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and Polish film professionals, state institution and media representatives

Year-round Activities

Apart from the festival itself, taking place in October, the Ji.hlava organisation team arranges various events during the whole year:

Echoes of Ji.hlava IDFF - festival echoes take place in Czechia, Slovakia, and other European countries (Belgium, France, Ukraine etc.)
Documentary Mondays - regular documentary film screenings with the presence of their authors, taking place in Prague art cinema Světozor
Living Cinema - screening of selected Czech documentary films, taking place in summer in unconventional places in Jihlava and Prague
Czech Joy in Czech Cinemas - cinema distribution of selected Czech documentary films in Czech and Slovak cinemas
Cultural Hub - a meeting of Jihlava cultural scene representatives, focusing at support of the city development

Educational Activities

Ji.hlava IDFF participates in number of educational activities:

Center for Documentary Film - a space in Jihlava Dukla cinema dedicated to the observation and exploration of the documentary cinematography on several simultaneous levels (education, library, video library, research)
Media & Documentary - a workshop for film science and journalism students on the topic of writing about documentary film, taking place within Ji.hlava IDFF
The Boundaries of Film - lectures, screenings and discussions about unusual documentary film formats