MAJORDOCS PITCH

The 5 selected projects for MajorDocs PITCH 2023 are:

• The Border House, Andrés Duque
• Antonina, Daniel Riera
• Masculinidades Encontradas, Ivan Aranega
• El Árbol de la Sombra Rota, Nicolás Baksht
• Il tempio della memoria, Alberto Gemmi

The Border House, Andrés Duque

Original title: La casa de la frontera
International title: The border house

SYNOPSIS
THE BORDER HOUSE is a film that tells the story of a Karelian theater group preparing a new play about a family that is visited by three diplomats who bring an important message: the new border line established between two countries is going to cross their home. They appreciate and celebrate the fortune of being part of a historical event. But once the new order is installed, any gesture such as going to the bathroom, watering a plant or putting a gnocchi in one’s mouth could unleash an international conflict.

BIO
His first film “Ivan Z” is a portrait of cult filmmaker Iván Zulueta. Later on, he has done self-referential films and portraits about exceptional figures such as the composer Oleg Karavaichuk that have received numerous awards and recognitions at film festivals around the world (Punto de Vista, Cinéma du Réel, Dokufest, D’A, Unicorn Awards, Goya Awards, City of Barcelona Award) and have been exhibited in cultural centers such as the Reina Sofía National Art Center Museum (MNCARS), Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA), Vienna Museum of Modern Art (MUMOK), Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art (GARAGE) and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg, among others.

WORKS
Iván Z (2004), Parallel 10 (2005), Landscapes in a Truck (2006), Bartleby’s Constellation (2007), Life Between Worlds Not in Fixed Reality (2008), All You Zombies (2008), It’s Not The Image It’s The Object (2009), Color Runaway Dog (2011), Dress Rehearsal for Utopia (2012), First Symptoms (2015), Oleg and The Rare Arts (2016), Carelia – International with Monument (2018). Tropic Seamount – A tale of the Lockdown (2022). The King is Dead (2023, in post-production).

Production countries: Spain and Finland

Project’s stage: Development

Name of the producer / production company:  Paco Poch, Mallerich Films

Short presentation of the producer /  production company: Mallerich Films Paco Poch S.L. was created in 1984 (first under the name of Virginia Films). Since then, is dedicated to the production of documentary and fiction feature films.

Antonina, Daniel Riera

Original and international title (provisional): Antonina

SYNOPSIS
Follow-up of the writing process of a new poetry book by the Mallorcan poet Antonina Canyelles over one year with its multiple layers between reflections on the main themes in her work, finding its own cinematographic grammar.

BIO 
(Olot, 1970) Bachelor in Fine Arts (1988-93) and alumni at the Master de Cinema Documental de Creació UPS-BSM 2022-23.  As a photographer he has been publishing portraits in international magazines since mid 90s, like Fantastic Man, The Gentlewoman, Butt or Les Cahiers Purple, and personal projects had been exhibited in Museums and galleries in group and solo shows, like Diechtorhallen (Hamburg),  MAMM (Moscow), Casa de Costa (NY), FOAM (Amsterdam), La Virreina Centre de l’Imatge (Barcelona), Colette (Paris), Museu del Disseny (Barcelona), Cristobal Balenciaga Museoa (Getaria)  or Les Rencontres d’Arlès 2008, among others. In parallell to “Antonina” he’s completing a documentary of about 1 hour with Moroccan writer Abdellah Taïa about the houses he inhabited and impacted his life and writing, for Apartamento Publishing, and he just filmed the visuals for the opera “Rinaldo” by Haendel for the historical Goethe Theater in Halle, the Xavier Sabata version (June 2023).  He has directed commercial visuals for brands like Loewe, Hermès or Berluti.

Production countries: Spain

Project’s stage: Documentation process, some hours of voice recording, filmed initial images for the “teaser” and screen location test. 

Name of the producer:  Cesc Mulet

Masculinidades Encontradas, Ivan Aranega

Original title: Masculinidades Encontradas

SYNOPSIS
Through hundreds of old found photographs and several contemporary stories, Masculinidades Encontradas explores the social and personal consequences of masculine stereotypes.

BIO
Spanish filmmaker, studied philosophy at the University of Valencia. His debut documentary, ‘Berlin Burlesque,’ achieved successful distribution through Rise and Shine World Sales across various European TV stations. Over the past two decades, he has resided in Berlin, São Paulo, and Miami.

Production country: Spain

Project’s stage: Development

 

The tree of the broken shadow, Nicolás Baksht

 

Original title: El árbol de la sombra rota
International title: The tree of the broken shadow

SYNOPSIS
The femicide of my grandmother Carmen in Mexico, the shooting of my great-grandfather Gabriel for being an anti-fascist spy in the Spanish Civil War, and the disappearance of my Jewish family in Belarus.

BIO
Nicolás Baksht Somonte (1995) is a documentary filmmaker and multidisciplinary artist based in Mexico City. He won FONCA Jóvenes Creadores grantee in the video specialty. He has been selected and recognized with awards, mentions and participations in national and international film festivals such as Docs Mx, Cinélatino Rencontres de Toulouse, Catapulta Ficunam, Guadalajara Talents, Bolivia Lab, ASVOFF, Notodo Film Fest, Ultracinema, Docs Valencia, and MIC Istmo, to mention a few. His work also covers disciplines such as dance, video installation, performance, photography, film and visual arts, having exhibitions in cultural spaces such as the Centro Cultural Los Pinos, Centro de Cultura Digital (Estela de Luz), Centro Fotográfico Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Centro Cultural España, La Quiñonera, Cineteca Nacional, Museo de la Ciudad de Cuernavaca, Centro Cultural Futurama, Museo de Arte Popular, El Rule and the Bahidorá art circuit, among many others.

Production countries: Mexico (looking for spanish co-producer)

Project’s stage: We are in an advanced development stage. We won the Development stimulus from the Mexican Institute of Cinematography (IMCINE) and the Mexican grant “FONCA Young Creators“, with these funds we have done the research and we are currently recording investigative interviews that will shape the documentary script. The project has been selected in Docs Lab by Docs Valencia (2021), Plataforma Mx by Docs Mx (2023), Catapulta Ficunam (2023), Bolivia Lab (2023), Fulgor Lab (2023) and Mestizo Lab (2023). We are looking for a Spanish international co-producer. We are preparing the production dossier  to proceed with the search for financing in 2024.

Name of the producer / production company:  Aymara Larson / Lo Coloco Films

Short presentation of the producer /  production company: Aymara Larson Rivero is a Mexican anthropologist and filmmaker. During her studies she came near to visual anthropology, from where she started her filmmaking career with Kunami Che’e: To Wrap One self with the nagua (2020), an ethnographic short film that received an honorific mention at José Rovirosa Film Festival and was part of several national and international film festivals, among which Ethnofest Athens Ethnographic Film Festival and the XVII International Show case of Women on Film and TV stand out. Her projects are crossed by political ideas in their shape and content, always prioritizing the relationships created with the people with whom we tell stories, these bonds, woven behind camera are what make up these intimate portraits of reality. She has worked on documentary projects across Mexico, in places like Oaxaca, Tijuana and Mexico City. Her last documentary Who Casts the First Stone (2022) premiered in the Festival Requiem for Justice: Annual international rally of artists and writers for Social Justice.  The last years she has worked assisting executive producer Gabriela Valentán in several projects, in Greenlight, production company resulting of the alliance between EFD Group and Cinemat, with offices in Miami, Mexico and Caracas. Founded for the development and production of the animated feature Ana and Bruno. The mission of Lo Coloco Films is to produce a small number of high quality  films that can compete in the international market and can promote mexican cinema, emphazing a great working relationship with its collaborators, partners, and clients.

Il tempio della memoria, Alberto Gemmi

 

 

Original title: Il tempio della memoria

International title: The temple of memory

SYNOPSIS 
A cinematic journey in a place of mourning. A place that seems to belong to the dead, but with living people within.

BIO
Alberto Gemmi (1984). After his studies at the Helsinki Faculty of Arts, he graduates in Cinema at the University of Bologna and obtains a master’s degree in Filmmaking in Paris. His works focus on the research of archival materials for the creation of short film-diaries, reflecting on the idea of time and memory. Through a special language close to the visual anthropology, using the documentary gaze he also focalizes on urban mutations or complex issues of society. “Go Burning Atacama Go” wins the Lucca experimental film festival, while “Sinai – Another step on earth” had its premiere in Italy at the Turin Film Festival. His first feature film “Ogni Opera di Confessione” (password: OODC_master) was selected for Visions du Réel in Switzerland. In 2018 Alberto exhibited his main video works in a gallery in Neukölln, Berlin. Since 2013, he has been working at the “L’ Immagine Ritrovata” film restoration lab, which is part of Cineteca di Bologna.

Production country: Italy

Project’s stage: Late development

Name of the producer / production company: Gianluca De Angelis, Tekla Films

Short presentation of the producer /  production company:

Gianluca De Angelis. Film producer and journalist, in 2009 he founded Tekla, a production company based in Turin. As a producer he has made films screened in cinemas, broadcast by national and international TV channels and on OTT platforms. From May 2019 to May 2021 he has been a member of the board of Doc/it, the Italian association of documentary filmmakers. He is a Eurodoc graduate in 2018 and in 2021 he participated in the Alpi film lab workshop organised by Torino film lab.

Tekla Films is an independent production company based in Italy. Tekla develops, produces and distributes creative documentaries and films for an international audience. Tekla’s productions focus on socially relevant topics, in-depth cultural stories and projects concerning aspects of culture, politics, art and society. The projects realized have received awards at sector festivals and are distributed in cinemas, on TV and on OTT platforms. Tekla has established important partnerships with numerous broadcasters such as Sky, Rai, Arte, Al Jazeera, Repubblica.it.