SANTIAGO/SHEFFIELD – Four Chilean producers, three of them from provincial regions, are attending Sheffield Doc/Fest to create commercial networks in the documentary genre with Europe and the world.
MAFI, Mimbre (Arica), Trébol 3 and Totoral Films & Media Lab (both from Viña del Mar) are the companies that will participate with their projects.
Sheffield Doc/Fest, short for Sheffield International Documentary Festival (SIDF), is an international documentary festival and Marketplace held annually in Sheffield.
June 9 to 14, in Sheffield, U.K,, is the date for one of the most important festivals and markets regarding the documentary genre. The occasion represents a fundamental platform to seek funding, sell and distribute material, and generate business opportunities both in the U.K. and other markets.
For the second year in a row, a Chilean delegation will participate thanks to support from ProChile, entity that promotes the internationalization of the country’s creative industries.
The delegation is coordinated by the Cultural Corporation of Documentary Filmmakers Chiledoc and headed by Flor Rubina, director of the entity.
“Sheffield focuses on commercializing series, as well as single and trans-media projects”, emphasizes Flor Rubina.
“Sheffield is a very relevant market for documentary filmmakers of single films as well as series, and for the production of new narratives or trans-media endeavors, which is where our emphasis lies”, she explains, stressing “so it’s strategic that Chile participate in this event in order to promote our productions.”
Tevo Diaz, director of Trebol 3, states: “On this trip our aim is to find a co-producer to jointly launch the second season of our series Naufragios (Shipwrecks). We are also interested in contacting a sales agent for the first season.”
Meanwhile, producer Daniela Camino said about the participation of Mimbre: “We are taking a portfolio with several projects containing proposals with different themes, with films both in production and in the editing process.”
Raúl Vilches, head of the Department of Creative Industries at ProChile, says that “within our plans for the audiovisual sector we are boosting the documentary film sub-section, as we believe it has amazing potential, as well as Chilean animation. The support for this mission responds to our objective of relieving this area which has had and will continue to have, we are convinced, great international projection.
“The demand to participate in instances that promote the commercialization of our documentaries is growing every day”, says Rubina on the current situation. “The financing that ProChile is granting for us to reach markets not covered by other instances, is fundamental”, she states.
Local companies conquering global markets
The production company Trébol 3 will assist with its documentary series Naufragios, which focuses on emblematic shipwrecks that occurred in Chile between the 19th and 20th centuries, and is seen as a founding metaphor for our identity and cultural heritage. This material was already presented at MIPDoc and Guadalajara, confirming the series’ great international potential.
Totoral Films & Media Lab, dedicated to audiovisual and transmedial production, will promote three projects: Sin Fronteras, a television series that covers the borders of Chile with Peru, Bolivia and Argentina, in faraway places with extreme natural settings inhabited by characters that share a common ethnicity, but not nationality; Black Demon Team, an interactive project about a group of people that tries to recover the mystique of Black Demon, old wrestler of the remembered program Titans of the Ring, that thanks to the masked wrestling matches, overcame marginality and addictions; and La herencia, which tells the story of Pepe (41), who at age 35 and while living in Italy, discovered that his biological father, Rodrigo Retamal, a police colonel, was condemned by Chilean courts for his connection to human rights violations.
MAFI, Film Map of a Country, develops collaborative documentaries that promote social reflection and contribute to our audiovisual memory. The participating projects are: MAFI.TV, a web platform that houses more than 200 short pieces recorded by a network of filmmakers who contribute with their outlook on current Chilean society; Dios, which explores the tension between different communities of Chilean society, regarding the impression of God; and Tour, which using short scenes recorded from north to south, builds a sensational journey through different iconographic landscapes of Chile, in search of behind-the-scenes humor of the economic and social phenomenon that is tourism.
The spirit of the coming version is evident in the words of its executive director Liz McIntyre. “From the most remarkable new talents to the biggest names in the scene worldwide, all the creators of documentary films, interactive and virtual reality projects, converge at Sheffield to showcase their work: they are as nonconformist as they are influential, as funny as they are extravagant, as poignant as they are startling. This year, we shed light on stories with reaction and celebrate the human spirit”.
Chiledoc’s mission is to promote Chilean documentary film and create networks to boost its distribution and marketing, both inside and outside the country. Its lines of action are training, networking, research, distribution and dissemination.
