Five years of DocMontevideo

Round numbers are always cause for celebration. For DocMontevideo this fifth edition is also an opportunity to confirm that what we envisioned years ago now exists and can continue to grow.

We planned a space in Latin America for coordination and reflection. We have generated a place to belong nourished by these ideas and by the projects and opportunities we worked together to create. We have built links among television channels, producers and program makers and thus strengthened the development, production and distribution processes. We have focused on training, on constructing networks and on fostering a new market. In these five years we have seen many projects germinate, and processes have crystallized and come to fruition in ways that today have an impact throughout the continent.

This fifth edition strengthens the spaces that have been constructed and promotes new initiatives. For the first time we are being joined by the Sundance Institute and Tribeca Institute from the United States. We are sharing the experience of the program Viewfinder Latin America. We are playing host to television channels from Latin America for the eTAL workshop and the market areas. We are working with the National Film Board of Canada to set up a space for producing interactive prototypes. We have discovered the web productions of the French Channel Arte. And lastly, we are continuing our journey into creation documentary with Marta Andreu, our look at urgency cinema thanks to Lech Kowalski’s work, and we will share a master class with Luis Ospina.

In 2013 the close links that have developed between TAL (the Latin American network of public cultural television channels) and DocMontevideo gave rise to a new initiative: the TAL Prizes. This is a space to give recognition to and promote the international placement of contents from public cultural television channels in Latin America. These films will be re-shown in nine countries.

Improving our capacities, which range from the development of movies to showing them, from artistic creation to insertion in the market, also involves creating networks. With this goal in mind we have sought synergies with other experiences in the region and in the world like DokLeipzig (Germany), DocBuenosAires (Argentina), ChileDoc (Chile), Edinburgh Pitch (Scotland), DocsBarcelona (Spain), DocsDF (Mexico) and Visions du Réel (Switzerland).

All these, and other connections that are detailed in the catalogue, have come together to form the DocMontevideo agenda for 10 intense days that we know are going to be useful and fruitful for everyone.

These last five years have been nourished by initiatives such as these. Looking back on the road we have traveled we are aware that DocMontevideo’s work goes far beyond us as a team or as an organization. We have been on a five-year mission and reached the point we are at today thanks to the support of colleagues, institutions and enterprises that have also had a vision of this meeting and have helped it grow and improve from each edition to the next. We would like to thank all of them for their five years of sustained support.

Welcome to DocMontevideo 2013.