Documentary Film Festival at Cine Lumiere

The Documentary Film Festival was a project coordinated from 2007 to 2011 by the French Institute to showcase the work of new and established directors from across the European continent.

Ready Steady Doc! a Season of European Documentaries 2012 (16 – 23 Feb 2012)

In the framework of the 30th edition of the modern Olympic Games in London, Ready Steady Doc! brought together documentaries from all over Europe to make you see sport in a whole new light.

An amazing line-up of sport celebrities attended the festival: the manager of the Spanish National Football Team Vicente del Bosque, French football star Vikash Dhorasoo, Hungarian three-time water-polo Olympic champion György Kárpáti, European Senior Champion pole-vaulter Herbert Sepp, 83-year-old Belgian Olympic athlete Yvonne Van Bets, and more!

More information here.

Ready Steady Doc!

Screen Green! a Season of European Documentaries 2010 (4 – 11 November 2010)

Screen Green! an eight day film festival, brought together documentaries from 14 European countries that focus on humankind’s fragile relationship with the natural world. Recent news regarding oil spills, environmental pollution and dwindling natural resources no longer concern just a minority of people but engage entire communities throughout the world.
Screen Green! has put commonplace materials and aspects of our everyday life under scrutiny (PLANEATFish n’ Pills, Plastic Planet). It sheded light on pollution and the impact of climate change (Green Line – Urban Transport, Pollution, Climate Chaos in the South) and discussed possible solutions (Selective Waste Collection – From Myths to Reality, The 4th Revolution – EnergyAutonomy, Early Learning). Furthermore Screen Green! presented documentaries that chart the livelihoods of isolated communities and their complex relationship to nature (Gold Futures, The Mirror,The River, Three Men and a Fish Pond, Stop, Look, Listen). Finally French environmentalist, Nicolas Hulot, addressed some of the social and political issues that stand in the way of environmental solutions (One).

Screenings were accompanied by a Q&A session with the filmmakers. The Festival took place at Ciné lumière, the Hungarian Cultural Centre and the Italian Cultural Institute.

Memory, a Season of European Documentaries 2009 (15 – 21 November 2009)

Communism and its fall was the strong theme of this 3rd edition of the festival, featuring documentaries such as PRL De Luxe, Life Stories, Children of the Decree and Borderline Case. Children of the Decree is a chilling look at the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu and his enforcement of the infamous Decree 770, which banned birth control and abortion.

To mark the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution, three shorts were screened as part of an evening entitled Close Up! November 1989, followed by a panel discussion brought together the key representatives of the November revolutionary forces.
Certain directors offered a more personal singular take on this year’s theme, by basing their work on family members (Grandpa and Grandma; Bucarest, Memory Lost).  For those seeking a look at the history of feminism the documentary Et ELLE créa la femme offers a fascinating insight through the French magazine ELLE.  The season extended beyond Ciné lumière with The Soviet Story (Latvia) and Borderline Case (Hungary) at the Hungarian Cultural Centre; and Primo Levi’s Journey (Italy) at the Italian Cultural Institute.

The Festival took place at Ciné Lumière, the Hungarian Cultural Centre and the Italian Cultural Institute.