Media and Documentary 2.0

Workshop

For the first time in 2020, thanks to the support of the EEA Grants, a 2.0 version of the workshop was organised in a format expanded to include collaboration with prominent international film critics. A pandemic situation prevented the workshop from taking place physically, so all activities were held online.

In 2021, participants will get the opportunity to meet at the workshop held during the 25th Ji.hlava IDFF in person.

On the first day of the seminar, students will be treated to lectures by international lecturers, which will open up broader themes of the media imprint of documentary film and give insight into the international context of writing about film. On the second day, students will attend lectures by leading Czech journalists, who will present various forms of critical reflection, as well as the pitfalls and advantages of different genres (review in the daily press, review in the specialist press, commentary, interview, essay, catalogue annotation) in case the text deals with documentary film or a film festival.

Then, for the remaining two days of the festival, students will have the opportunity to watch the festival screenings and accompanying programme, follow the festival events and prepare their texts. On the last day of the festival, they will reunite with their chosen lecturers and analyse their texts in detail in small seminar groups according to their chosen genre. Those of them who take the seminar as an elective in their university course will then send the edited text once more to their lecturer and the teacher in charge.

Trips to festivals abroad

After the festival, the five best texts will be published online at dokrevue.cz and their authors will then establish a year-long collaboration with the editors of the European documentary film periodical Modern Times Review. These selected students will be paid to participate in one international documentary film festival during the year (e.g. IDFA, FID Marseille, DOK Leipzig, Visions du Réel, CPH:DOX or Doc Lisboa), from which they will report to Modern Times Review under the guidance of a tutor.

Text exchange

The project also includes collaboration between dokrevue.cz and moderntimes.review. Thanks to the project, texts are exchanged between the magazines, both of which provide their readers with expanded content and new perspectives on various topics.

Here you can find text that were created within the workshop.