The third edition of MajorDocs, the international documentary film festival organised in Mallorca by the production company Mosaic, was presented this morning in Palma. From the 5th to the 9th of October, the island will become the venue for non-fiction cinema in its most international edition to date.
This year, MajorDocs will pay tribute to Lithuanian filmmaker Audrius Stonys, the leading exponent of the “poetic documentary” with more than 20 titles to his name. Awarded a prize by the European Film Academy for Earth of the Blind and heir to auteurs such as Herzog, Mekas and Tarkovsky, Stonys will open the festival with The Woman and the Glacier, a reflection on time and nature. The following day, he will offer a masterclass that will open the professional days at the Sa Nostra Cultural Centre.
The writer Remedios Zafra will also give a lecture on her latest book, Frágiles, which deals with the ways of dealing with the anxiety derived from contemporary working lives. The third and final masterclass will be given by the producer and lecturer Marta Andreu, who returns to the festival to talk about creation in times of uncertainty.
The MajorDocs garden will also host three open debates on different creative aspects of documentaries, in collaboration with ProDocs, the association of documentary producers with the participation of its president Ventura Durall, DOCMA, the association of documentary filmmakers in Spain with its founder Andrea Guzmán, and Apordoc, the Portuguese documentary film association.
A RETREAT FOR CREATORS
One of the novelties of this edition is the collaboration of MajorDocs with Residencias Walden in its first documentary creation residency in Mallorca. The workshop is aimed at Spanish-speaking documentary filmmakers, one of them from the Balearic Islands, who will work on their projects with Marta Andreu in a rural house.
After a week of retreat, the participants will present their projects within the framework of MajorDocs to producers and programmers of the most important documentary festivals in the world: IDFA, Sheffield Doc/Fest, Festival Dei Popoli and MakeDox. Members of all of them will attend the professional sessions in a unique opportunity for the local industry to access the major documentary markets.
A DOCUMENTARY ABOUT DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKERS FROM THE BALEARIC ISLANDS
The production company El Obrador, a Mosaic brand, is finishing production of the documentary Illes de No-Ficció, which follows the careers of five of the Balearic Islands’ most internationally renowned documentary filmmakers: Carlota Bujosa, Macià Florit, Joan Porcel, Xavi Herrero and Javier G. Lerín. The organisers point out that this project will promote the dissemination of a genre that dominates local production but is still unknown to the general public. Co-directed by Ariadna Relea and Ricard Mamblona, the documentary is part of a transmedia project that includes a book of conversations with the filmmakers, edited together with Disset and whose presentation will be made in collaboration with Rata Corner. The documentary will premiere on 30 September at the Cine Rívoli as a prelude to MajorDocs.
MajorDocs is a project by the production companies Mosaic and El Obrador, with the sponsorship of Innside Palma Center and the support of the Consell de Mallorca, the Ajuntament de Palma and the Conselleria d’Educació.
