Open City Docs Fest Press Launch 2012

 Building on on inaugural success of 2011, we're delighted to be working in partnership with inspiring and inspired cohorts in the form of individuals, distributors, agencies, festivals and organisations that help get the stories out there and told. If you'd like to participate, we'd love to start a conversation! Come off the sidelines and get in touch here.

 Festival Producer Treasa O'Brien, Photo: Gloria Lin

For 2012, our  festival jury will be chaired by director Nicolas Philibert
(César and European Film Awards Winner Être et Avoir)

Jurors include:

Diane Abbott, MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington
Marc Isaacs - BAFTA Winner (Lift, Men of the City)
Wojciech Marczewski- Filmmaker and co-director of the Andrzej Wajda Film School, Poland
Carol Morley - Filmmaker (Dreams of a Life)
Dave Calhoun (Film Editor, Time Out)
Oli Harbottle (Head of Distribution, Dogwoof)
David Price (Vice Provost, Research, UCL)
Olly Lambert (Journalist of the Year 2007, Director My Child the Rioter, 2012)
Susie Orbach – writer and psychoanalyst plus filmmaker John Akomfrah (The Nine Muses, Handsworth Songs).

 Festival Founder and Director, Michael Stewart, Photo: Gloria Lin

UK Premieres include Chinese director, Xun Yu’s The Vanishing Spring Light, Gwenaëlle Gobé’s This Space Available and Tunisian filmmaker Elyes Baccar's Rouge Parole. The Vanishing Spring Light is a film about a family's love and loss, obligation, attachment, guilt, transformation and destiny. This Space Available is influenced by the writing of the director's father, Marc Gobé and brings energy and urgency to stories of people around the world fighting to reclaim their public spaces from visual pollution. Baccar Films’ Rouge Parole, travelling from town to town showing a collective nationwide revolt against dictatorship in Tunisia.

This year’s festival has introduced a special strand of Artists’ Documentary, focusing on artists who push the boundaries of documentary aesthetics, including contemporary work and cult classics.

Open City Docs Fest Press Launch 2012 Photo: Gloria Lin

We'd like to especially thank UCL alumnus Christopher Nolan for his support and interest in moving image.