Documentary Edge Festival 201

First Announcement For Documentary Edge Festival 2011

The Documentary New Zealand Trust presents
DOCUMENTARY EDGE FESTIVAL 2011

After an increase in festival goers this past year and trustees attending prestigious documentary summits across the world, the first wave of film announcements for the Documentary Edge Festival 2011 is here.

Taking place in both the metropolis that is Auckland (17th February – 6th March) and the nation’s capital (10th – 27th March) this year the festival showcases a bumper selection of films.

2011’s Documentary Edge will also see the continuation of the popular Documentary Edge Forum including DOC Pitch (Pitching Forum), and Doc Lab’s sophomore year to further future proof the documentary industry. The industry events will run in February at Auckland University of Technology (AUT). 2011 will also mark the arrival of the eagerly-awaited Documentary Edge Campus, providing the public with a new resource centre/library for documentary films and materials.

The first of this year’s titles include:

- In 2006, director Spike Lee created an astonishing record of the cataclysmic effects of Hurricane Katrina on the city of New Orleans with his epic award-winning documentary, When the Levees Broke. Five years later, Lee returns to New Orleans, to see how the ambitious plans to reinvent the Crescent City were playing out. He finds a patchwork of hope and heartache just as a new disaster unfolds with If God is Willing and da Creek Don’t Rise (USA)
- Picking up prizes around the world on the festival circuit My Perestroika (USA) follows five ordinary Russians living in extraordinary times – from their sheltered Soviet childhood, to the collapse of the Soviet Union during their teenage years, to the constantly shifting political landscape of post-Soviet Russia.
- Leave Them Laughing (Canada/USA), Oscar winner John Zaritsky’s tale of a California-based Canadian comic facing her death as she lived her life, “killing” audiences across the planet.
- Stand Up (NZ) features interviews with faces familiar from the comedy circuit talking about what drives a person to do what is commonly believed we fear more than death – to stand up in front of a crowd in the hope of making them laugh.
- Is She Or Isn’t He? (NZ) is the intimate and provocative story of a self-proclaimed “hairy woman with a penis” and her five-year search to find love and acceptance, captured by Justin Pemberton (The Nuclear Comeback)

Five more films accompany these first announcements, including Most Valuable Players (USA), Budrus (Israel/USA), Jane’s Journey (Germany), Darwin (Switzerland) and Donated To Science (NZ)

For more information www.documentaryedge.org.nz .

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