New Scottish Doc Initiative

EDINBURGH: The Centre for Moving Image (CMI) and the Scottish Documentary Institute have entered into a partnership to help provide doc-makers with unique platforms to attract audiences and broaden the way consumers can experience Scottish documentary filmmaking.

The first collaboration between the two outfits is a session on “How to get to Cannes,” with Gaëlle Vidalie, a programmer from Cannes, Director’s Fortnight on November 12, who has been invited to give a talk about Cannes and to connect with the Scottish film scene.

Noe Mendelle, the director of Scottish Documentary Institute, said: “We believe that documentary film should have a firm place at the core of Scotland’s creative industries and continue to put forward our views at such a crucial point in time for cultural policymaking. We’re very happy to go forward into 2011 with a closer working partnership with the CMI, to enhance the documentary provision for Edinburgh and Scotland, and to grow Scotland’s reputation for outstanding documentary practice internationally.”

Gavin Miller, the CEO of the CMI, added: “Documentary filmmaking plays an important part of the wider moving image space in Scotland and in the U.K. We’re delighted to be able to partner with the Scottish Documentary Institute to both showcase documentary film making to new and wider audiences through our existing distribution channels and to help shape a year round knowledge and learning program for Scottish and U.K. talent at both Filmhouse and Edinburgh International Film Festival.”

Mendelle continued: “We bring many filmmakers of note to Edinburgh for workshops and seminars – in the past we have hosted the likes of Nicholas Philibert, Nick Broomfield, Paul Watson, Kim Longinotto, Sergey Dvortsevoy, James Longley, Thomas Riedelsheimer, Peter Liechti and Michael Glawogger. We are delighted to bring these master filmmakers to a wider public attention through our collaboration with CMI.

“SDI’s ethos is to bring together new and old filmmakers and decision makers, so that they can learn from each other and discover new talent and new ways of doing things. That’s why our initiatives such as Bridging the Gap and Interdoc have been so successful.”