Al Jazeera director general to speak at MIPDOC

Wadah Khanfar, director general at Al Jazeera

Khanfar will deliver a keynote speech concerning the reasons behind Al Jazeera Network becoming the first Arab broadcaster to launch a documentary channel covering current affairs, social issues, culture, art and religion. Khanfar will reveal how his company is becoming one of the major actors in the industry, catching the attention of documentary producers worldwide.

MIPDOC will focus for the first time on the thriving Italian production industry. During the “MIPDOC Made in Italy” event, Alessandro Signetto, president of the documentary association Doc IT, is to show trailers of five productions he selected from the latest and best documentaries, in the presence of their producers.

Conference programme

This year’s conference programme will also offer the MIPDOC participants panel sessions on “Online documentary distribution,” “Dramatising reality” and two workshops to help maximise the ability to negotiate with potential partners and to deal with new developing territories : “How To Pitch” and “Co-production with China.”

MIPDOC welcomes the second edition of the “International Trailblazers,” an initiative designed to recognise creativity and innovation in the documentary field. The initiative is sponsored by the Sundance Channel , Korean Broadcasting Institute (KBI) and organised with the support of the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).

An international selection panel made up of The International Documentary Association (USA), Hot Docs (The Canadian Festival), The European Documentary Network (Denmark), Encounters (The South African Documentary Festival), EBS International Documentary Festival (Korea) and the association of all Japan TV Programs (ATP) has chosen eight visionary documentary-makers drawn from Europe, Asia/Pacific, the Americas and Africa to be the 2007 “International Trailblazers” : Marshall Curry (USA), Larry Weinstein (Canada) Paolo Trombetti (Italy), Uldis Cekulis (Latvia), Jean-Marie Teno (Cameroon), Vincent Moloi (South Africa), Gan Chao (China) and Nao Kubota (Japan).

Co-Production Challenge

The third edition of the MIPDOC Co-Production Challenge, which is sponsored by NFB (National Film Board of Canada), will give directors and producers the opportunity to pitch their documentary project to a high-profile jury of savvy industry experts.

MIPDOC 2006 saw a 13% rise in participation with 432 companies from 57 countries, 385 acquisition executives attending. Production and sales companies sent 1189 programmes to the digital screening library, of which 769 were appearing at a market for the first time (total: 26 000 screenings over two days).

For the 10th edition of MIPDOC, a press conference will be organised on Monday 16 April at 12pm (Palais des Festivals) in the presence of the eight Trailblazers, sponsors and partners.