The whole year we have been looking for the best speakers from the world of documentary, have been peering into their projects and coordinating their plans for the future. Finally we are ready to present the fourth session of DOCU/CLASS workshop which covers lectures and presentations of the most interesting documentary filmmakers from Ukraine and around the world. Yulia Serdyukova, a DOCU/CLASS coordinator, speaks on who has prepared and what has been prepared for Docudays UA-2015.

To watching a film I prefer only making of it. But most of all I love talking about cinema. Peter Greenaway once said that his favorite moment during filmmaking was when he and his DoP sat in comfortable arm-chairs facing each other and discussing what their next film would be like. This picture is the coziest image of ‘making of’ in my head. A headcanon, if you know what I mean. And this is how I imagine atmosphere at DOCU/CLASS workshop – a place where young yearning filmmakers, cineastes and ordinary documentary cinemagoers can derive inspiration and experience with both hands while listening to more experienced colleagues and communicating with each other or even dozing in comfortable arm-chairs absorbing the air “energized for creative work”.

This year program of workshops and lectures DOCU/CLASS has turned out to be so cool that my colleagues envy me that they will have to present films in neighboring halls instead of joining us in our micro University.

By the way, a few words about neighboring halls. This year DOCU/CLASS has come closer to main programs of the festival – we have found a room for us in the Cinema House by capturing a recently renovated hall on the first floor. Our decorators are currently occupied with making it as cozy as the previous workshop space at Kinopanorama cinema and in this matter they are helped by a Ukrainian manufacturer of bean bag furniture Poparada.

This year DOCU/CLASS will be opened by a “tough guy and a poet”, a world famous and award-winning Director of Photography Lars Skree, who participated in shooting three films from the festival program including The Look of Silence directed by Joshua Oppenheimer. Lars Skree is one of those rare persons with whom it’s worth just sitting in one room.

Two “director” workshops – as if specially selected in order to supplement each other. A Romania – Georgia creative couple Artchil Khetagouri and Ileana Stanculescu specially for DOCU/CLASS developed an exhaustive lecture on main aspects of storytelling in documentary cinema with regard to protagonists. The detailed description of their future lecture reflects deep respect to the audience when complicated things are explained in a simple way and without indulgence. Aliona van der Horst, whose retrospective is in non-competition program Docudays UA-2015, is famous for the poetic touch in her films. She will speak on construction of an unusual documentary film by means of sound and music.

The special focus of workshops this year is multimedia (or transmedia) documentary. Finding itself at the interface between different forms of art and journalism, a multimedia project is hard to place in a traditional production and distribution channels. From the other side, it has a flexibility which allows it to be more effective to work with painful topics and can provide benefit. Maria Morina and Oksana Yushko are authors and Anna Shpakova is a curator of a multimedia project Grozny: 9 Cities, which is screened at the festival, will speak about how to  present a critical project on the events in Russia and also about practical aspects of a multimedia project creation. Special guests of the workshop – a French producer Stephane Hueber-Blies and an American journalist Michelle Mitchell – will speak about activist side of transmedia genre through the example of the project The Uncondemned: Rape as a War Strategy.

Another lecture on documentary and activism will be from founders and managers of the largest network of documentary films distribution in the world Cinema Politica (Canada), cineastes and culture experts Ezra Winton and Svetla Turnin. If anyone is aware if cinema can move walls, these are those young and energetic Canadians.

Another young cineaste, Andrei Rus from Romania, will follow up the genre of a film diary from the beginnings of cinematography to the era of hundreds of millions personal online diaries. This lecture is a cherry on top for those who feel high from cinema theory and modern philosophy  as much as from reading detective stories or roller-skating.

We prepared a special present for producers. The leading producer of the Balkans, Martichka Bozhilova will tell you everything a documentary film-maker from Eastern Europe needs to know about cooperation with Western Europe and entry into an international market.

A world-renowned Ukrainian photographer Alexander Glyadyelov, an author of photography exhibition You See, My Brother?, which tells a story of the revolution and the war in Ukraine and takes place within the festival, along with his audience will try to reflect on the accordance of our efforts to the challenges of time. And on the price of these efforts as well. Even when joking, and often exactly at that time, Glyadyelov always speaks to the point. This meeting can become the one that will steer your energy to the right direction.

A Russian director Askold Kurov is one of those people for whom politics has turned into a personal experience long ago. Each his work is a new challenge to a pitiless machine which consumes human life, honor and dignity as a kindling material for its own pseudo-majesty. He is a coauthor of projects Winter, Go Away! and Kids 404. During the workshop, the director will present exclusive extracts from his work-in-progress project about Oleh Sentsov.

On top of the program. For those who have heard about pitching but have never tried it (or tried but failed) there is a training pitching session from documentary cinema laboratory LabDOCUTOLOKA. Session will be moderated by Ella Shtyka, a documentary cinema producer, and Dmytro Tyazhlov, a project curator, and there will also be honorable guests of the festival among experts.

Documentary cinema is one of the most amazing human arts. On one hand, it exists at the interface between real life and artistic dimension. On the other hand, as any other media communication it arises where author’s message meets the audience perception. In heads of each of them and somewhere in between at a time. In this meaning DOCU/CLASS is a pure space where cinema concepts exist. Not less and sometimes more vivid than a screening room.

DOCU/CLASS workshop will be taking place from 21 to 26 March on the first floor of the House of Cinema. Lectures start twice a day – at 12:00 a.m. and 15:00 p.m.

Admission is by pre-registration.

Application form can be found here.