CPH:DOX Director Tine Fischer Believes In The ‘Poetry Of Impact’

The festival opens with the world premiere of the Danish film Mand Falder, also competing for the main CPH:DOX award, alongside Erik Gandini’s The Swedish Theory of Love and Brothers by Norway’s Aslaug Holm. 12 Nordic titles are vying for the Nordic DOX Award such as Natural Disorder and Return of the Atom. 

It its 13th year, would you say that CPHDOX has become much more focused on political activism, with a clear strategy to act, engage and hopefully contribute to changes?
Tine Fischer: Historically, CPH: DOX has always given a large space to artistic documentary filmmaking and in our curative choices we have an artistic approach, not an NGOs approach. That said, during the last 2 years, the festival team and I have felt that there is also a need for what we call the ‘poetry of impact, ie films developed with a strong artistic standpoint that can also have a concrete social or political impact afterwards. Therefore what we try to do today for the main festival section and the Forum is to identify the films that combine an artistic approach to a strong political thinking.

Is climate change the hottest topic of debate at this year’s CPH:DOX?
TF: The festival takes place just two weeks before COP 21 in Paris. For me it was obvious to establish a dialogue on what is going to be debated at the conference and what it’s about. So we’ve asked two key personalities –the Danish/Icelandic artist Olafur Eliasson and Canadian filmmaker and activist Noemi Klein to curate programmes that deal with climate change.
Again, the choices from these two people reflect what we discussed earlier: most of the films selected by Olafur look at man’s relationship to nature but seen from a very conceptual/artistic standpoint, whereas Naomi’s programme is more focused on politically-oriented works.

Quite a few films deal with the refugee crisis as well…
TF: When the crisis hit the media we were meeting our deadlines, but we still decided to do a specific focus on that through our ‘Borderline’ sidebar. Some very strong political films are part of that section such as the Dutch film Those who Feel the Fire Burning, the UK film A Syrian Love Story or Danish film Dreaming of Denmark by Michael Graversen.
In the Nordic DOX Competition, there is also Andreas Koefoed’s At Home in the World about a 10 year-old asylum seeker. It’s another beautiful film on the refugee topic.

Have you noticed any common thread in the Nordic docs that you’ve selected, on a thematic or artistic standpoint and could you present the three Nordic films selected for the main CPH:DOX competition slot?
TF: Nordic docs are easy to identify with their specific tone and high quality. In terms of themes, it’s clear that a decade ago the hybrid scene was top news. Now most films are hybrid, using a complicated filmic language, and only a few exceptions are classic observational docs. There is an incredible inventiveness in Nordic documentary filmmaking.

In the main competition I’m so proud to have three very different Nordic films. Eric Gandini’s The Swedish Theory of Love is a political essay on the Swedish welfare system with a high artistic quality. The Norwegian film Brothers by Aslaug Holm is the documentary answer to the US fiction film Boyhood made several years ago. Brothers is amazing and perhaps one of my favourite films. Then the Danish film Mand falder by Anne Regitze Wivel focuses on Danish artist Per Kirkeby. Anne is one of Denmark’s greatest filmmakers and this is her at her best. She has filmed Kirkeby over a period of time, as he tried to recover from a brain injury and regain his ability to paint. Beyond the portrayal of the world-renown artist, the film reflects on what art is about.

Many films and events have a life outside of Copenhagen. How essential are those ‘outside the wall’ events for CPH:DOX?
TF: Last year was the first year where we did a live transmission and streaming of a film -1989- in 57 countries, and we started ‘DOX:on:Tour’. This year we’re doing live transmissions of three films and taking festival films to Zealand, Aarhus and Scania.
As a publicly funded festival, it is essential for us to bring CPH:DOX films to the widest audience possible. Therefore we are also working on a digital version of the festival.

Last year you launched the Mega-trends initiative to increase audience engagement, and this year it has evolved into ‘Reality:Check. What is it about?
TF: For many years we had panels, Q&As, and I always felt we didn’t have enough space for audience engagement. Our idea now is to dedicate the first three days of the festival to a civic society forum where academics, writers, politicians will be invited to discuss with festival people the main topics of the programme.
If we want an active democracy and civic society, then you need a forum where people can discuss, reflect and hopefully contribute to changes.

Is IDFA’s proximity overshadowing CPH:DOX?
TF: When we started it was not a problem, neither for us nor for IDFA. But today, IDFA has expanded a lot and Nordic producers feel pressured to choose between IDFA and CPH:DOX. With our Board, we are reflecting on this issue and checking if we would benefit from moving our dates. We need to evaluate what makes most sense for our main collaborators and partners.