Media and Documnatry | Jihlava International Documentary Film Festival

Lectures of creative writing on documentary films

October 25 – 29, 2013

Documentary film has become an important part of the media discourse, and today documentary criticism can be found in many genres and can be seen from various perspectives and contexts. Looking at documentaries from various points of view, subjecting them to analysis and initiating discussion – these will be the focus of the sixth annual Media and Documentary seminar. The seminar is part of the Jihlava IDFF’s long-term publishing and educational activities.

The Media and Documentary creative writing seminar is an opportunity for students of journalism, film studies, and other disciplines in the field of humanities and social sciences to work under leading critics and theoreticians in order to practice their writing skills in the areas of film and festival reviews. Lectures by leading Czech journalists will introduce students to various forms of critical review and the pitfalls and advantages of the various genres (reviews in daily newspapers or trade journals, commentary, interviews, essays) when the subject in question is a documentary film or a film festival. Lectures by foreign instructors will open further topics related to covering documentary film in the media.

Subsequently, the students will attend festival screenings, meet with directors and film professionals, and pay close attention in order to write their texts. On the final day of the festival, they will meet with their instructor (depending on the chosen genre) one more time in order to analyse their writing in small groups. Those who are attending the seminar as an elective university course (three Czech universities and a Slovak one have included the seminar as an elective subject and as part of the credit system) will subsequently present their final text to their professor.

The participants of the seminar will get the PRESS accreditation for free as well as low-budget accommodation (to be covered by the students).

Programme:

Part I

Friday, October 25, 10:00 a.m. – 5 p.m. Lectures (in Czech)

Kamil Fila / Review in Daily Newspapers and Online Media
Helena Bendová / Review in Trade Journals
Tomáš Feřtek / Possibilities of Reflection of a Film Festival, Reportage
Adam Zbiejczuk a Jiří Vaněk / Blog
Petr Fischer / Commentary
Vít Janeček / Essay

Part II

Saturday, October 26, 10:00 a.m. – 2 p.m. Lectures

Mária Ferenčuhová / Creative Writing in Social Sciences and Humanities (in Slovak)
Will Tizard / Reporting on documentary ﬁlm and ﬁlm festivals for the foreign press (in English)
others - TBA

(In the past years, the lectures were held e.g. by historian P. Adams Sitney, theorists Jeremy Orlebar, Thomas Elsaesser and Bill Nichols, journalists and Screen International correspondents Vladan Petković and Theodor Schwinke, chief editor of the French magazine Positif Matthieu Darras, chief editor of European Documentary Magazine DOX Truls Lie, editor of the French magazine Cahiérs du Cinema Jean-Philippe Tessé.)

If you have any question please contact media@dokument-festival.cz.

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