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This year’s DOC NYC Festival has been upgraded to include more student-oriented programming in its mission to celebrate and promote documentary filmmaking.
The major student-focused event introduced this year is the DOC Showcases, where films from students at different universities and colleges across New York City are previewed to take a peek into up-and-coming voices in documentary film.
“This is something we want to do every year now,” said Basil Tsiokos, the director of programming, “The idea is, we’re in New York City, there’s great documentary filmmaking programs at various colleges, universities, in the area, and we recognize that a lot of this work is ready to go.”
Tsiokos added that the showcases are a good way for the organization to show its support of rising filmmakers.
“We want to support emerging voices,” he said, “and these showcases that we’re doing are a way to give audiences a way to look at the new generation of filmmakers.”
While students usually submit to the documentary film festival regardless, the showcases are a way to directly support school programs that are geared towards film.
“We worked in partnership with the schools to have them help sort of determine which films can be shown at this point within the showcases,” said Tsiokos in regards to how their connection with New York City colleges has changed this year, “I think we’ll probably continue that in the future, but we certainly have included and continue to include shorts that have been made by students in our normal shorts program as well.”
The festival has also revamped the set of panels aimed at filmmakers. What used to be called ‘Docathon’ is now NYC Pro, a collection of events aimed to educate everyone from the beginner to the expert filmmaker on how to improve.
“We try to provide advice through different experts, filmmakers and other folks there,” said Tsiokos, “If something wasn’t necessarily smooth, that’s great because it’s a learning opportunity.”
Tsiokos noted that DOC NYC’s growth has allowed the festival to accommodate more films and adapt to new interests in film subjects. According to Tsiokos, the film festival now features over 100 feature documentaries and approximately 70 shorts—that, in addition to the panels and other programming, has grown the festival to a collection of 200 events. The growth means more voices can be heard, which creates new themes for both audiences and filmmakers to explore.
“It can seem overwhelming,” said Tsiokos, “but I think if people do look at the thematic sections it allows different films to stand out a little bit so that its not all about just the competition films, not just about the music films. If someone wants to sample a food documentary or sample an animal documentary, there are really great films in those sections that deserve attention.”
The film festival will run until November 19 at the IFC Center in Greenwich Village and Bow Tie Cinemas in Chelsea. For more information on ticketing and events, click here.
-by Kari Sonde