Docs in Progress
by Marta Andreu, workshop director.
In December 2010, Play-Doc initiated the first edition of Docs in Progress. For two weeks eight film-makers lived in a rural guest-house, in the vicinity of Tui, in order to share the process of working on their documentaries at the editing stage. Throughout the encounter, the exchange of viewings, trials, experiences and creative concerns generated a space for reflection, and for creative questioning, in order to come closer to the very best version of each of the works selected. Film-makers coming from distinct parts of the world (Uruguay, Spain, Germany, Iceland, Argentina, Brazil and Galicia) have, in this way, made available to others their own creation; putting it at the service of dialogue; asking the images themselves what film lies buried within them; whilst exposing the images to the gaze of others, so as to realise its birth.The outcome of this experience has been both intense and revealing. The results will soon be seen: films which, through this encounter, are achieving the depth, power and quality that was wanted. With all of this, the pay-off is clear: the loneliness of the film-maker, that loneliness that is necessary moment by moment; those solitary moments that must both conceal and display a naked and honest relation with his own creation, and with the world that this represents; that loneliness and those moments are capable of being shared. To convert the creative process into a collaborative act between those who are immersed in it, makes cinematography a task requiring both reflection and the circulation of ideas, and enables us to find works truly committed to both the cinema and to life, for cinema has the power to make us more open to life.