Slovenia hosts DokMa 2004, international festival of documentary films

On Tuesday the 2nd November DokMa 2004 - a documentary film festival opened in Slovenia. During the five-day festival films in four categories are shown: the Main Programme, the Inter-Regional Retrospective, the Great Documentaries and the Parallels. In addition to the film screenings, the Festival offers a deeper insight into documentary film through a workshop of documentary film theory and lectures of documentary film makers and others.

What is the philosophy of the festival? We asked Sasa Goropevsek, a member of the organizing committee, about the main aim of the festival:

"The main points of the documentary film festival DokMa in Maribor is to present the diversity of documentary film making in its various forms, to present the films by authors themselves that's why we invited many film directors and other film makers or members of the film crews of the films that are presented here at the festival and I think that is the main point of the festival to bring together the film makers and the viewers or spectators, so they can discuss the film that is screened. They can reflect on documentary film making itself, can think about the ways to document reality and present it in a film art form."

During the festival the audience can watch documentaries from Austria, Croatia, Denmark, The Netherlands, Australia, Serbia and Montenegro and Bosnia and Slovenia. What are the highlights of the festival?

'The Five Obstructions'

" Maybe from the main programme, I could expose the film "Across the border", a very fresh documentary omnibus that is directed by five directors from the new member states of the EU, coming from Poland, The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Slovenia. And some other films, for instance "The Five Obstructions" by Lars von Trier and Jorgen Leth accompanied by "The Perfect Human" by Jorgen Leth from 1967 and also one of the most important films I think in the programme of our festival is the "Route 181" fragments from a journey through Israel and Palestine by Eyal Sivan, Michel Khleifi."

The DokMa festival is thus dedicated to those who love cinema unconditionally, for those who consider the art of film as one of the most powerful forces and the festival is also dedicated to those who are against the consumer mentality of modern "developed" societies.