DocumentaMadrid will have five newly created awards in its honors

The filmmakers who participate will be eligible for a greater diversity of awards in the three competitive sections: National Competition, International Competition and Fugas International Competition.

The DocumentaMadrid International Documentary Festival, promoted by the Madrid City Council, will have in this edition, which will be held from May 4 to 14 at Cineteca, a greater diversity of awards and a total prize of 45,000 euros, 14,000 more than in the previous edition. In addition to the awards for Best Short Film and Best Feature Film from the three Competitive Sections: the International Competition, the International Fugas Competition and the National Competition - endowed with 5,000 and 10,000 euros respectively -, five newly created awards will be awarded.

The filmmakers who participate will also compete for the Cineteca Madrid Public Prize for Best Feature Film and Best Short Film of all Competitive Sections, which consists of the exhibition of the winning films at Cineteca Madrid and their distribution in other districts of the city; the Award for Best Spanish Director of the National Feature Film Competition, awarded by Aracne Digital Cinema, which consists of the contribution of services worth €6,500 for the preparation of the final DCP copy and other supports of his next film and the Award for Best Photography of the National Feature Film Competition in memory of the director of photography Jordi Abusada, who recently died, with a trophy.

In addition, the DOC-TAI Jury Prize – made up of students and professors of the current edition of the Master in Creative Documentary and Experimental Cinema of the TAI University Arts Center – will be awarded to the Best Short Film that participates in the National and Fugas Competitions. This will consist of an advisory program by renowned professionals for all phases of development and production of the next documentary project by the award-winning filmmaker.

Parallel activities

The exhibition PLATEA: Photographers look at the cinema in Matadero, organized by Acción Cultural Española (AC/E) and designed for outdoor spaces, has been conceived to be held, mainly, in the context of the numerous film festivals currently scheduled in Spain. The proposal, which the Madrid public will be able to see from April 4 to May 7 in Matadero Madrid as a Parallel Activity that will begin before the start of the 11th edition of the contest, includes works by 40 photographers, selected from among the main Spanish artists, who at some point in their careers have approached the world of cinema with their particular approach. The intention of this exhibition is to portray how some of the main Spanish photographers look at cinema. Their views - documentary, conceptual, artistic - are diverse although they all converge from the creativity of the medium, in the admiration and empathy that the cinematographic spectacle provokes in the viewer.

Algunas de las sugerentes y didácticas Actividades Paralelas que se desarrollarán a lo largo del certamen son:

• El Seminario Estrategias digitales del cine documental independiente: una mirada técnico-creativa a las herramientas y recursos expresivos del cine documental digital independiente. Orientadas a cineastas, estas jornadas ofrecerán del 8 al 10 de mayo en la Sala Borau de Cineteca una panorámica actual de la creación de cine documental digital: sus herramientas técnicas, sus posibilidades expresivasy la interacción de ambas áreas.
• The presentation of the Flaherty Film Seminar. The seminar takes its name from Robert Flaherty, director of Nanouk, the Eskimo (Nanook of the North, 1922), considered by many the “father of the documentary genre.” On Friday the 12th, a presentation of the curatorial model of the aforementioned seminar will be held for the Spanish public in the Borau Room of Cineteca.
• The round table on the impact documentary The Assault on the Screens. Specialists in social innovation, creators who can share their experience, third sector organizations and experts in on-demand distribution in movie theaters will debate the new trends in the genre at this event on Saturday, May 6 in the Sala Plató de Cineteca.
• The Project Production and Development Forum. MAKING WEBDOC will present in its third edition a forum for the production and development of interactive documentary projects on May 11 and 12 at the Espacio Intermediae in Matadero Madrid. This aims to find the collaboration ties and connections necessary to promote Spanish projects in creation, establishing development and distribution paths in other countries in Europe and Latin America mainly.
• The Tribute to Jean Rouch in collaboration with the Institut Français de Madrid. On Wednesday the 10th, one of the French director's most notable films will be screened at its headquarters as part of the celebration of the centenary of his birth - to which tribute has already been paid throughout the history of the event with a detailed retrospective - and a round table will be held with two experts on his work, who will discuss the most notable aspects of the ethnological and cinematographic work of the creator of ethnofiction and shared anthropology.
• The debate table The drift of the Spanish documentary in the 21st century. Debate of the cinematographic radio program 'The cinema that comes' on RNE. This will become a space for reflection among documentary professionals throughout a two-hour live program on rtve.es and a one-hour broadcast on Radio 5 on Wednesday, May 10 in the Sala Plató de Cineteca.