Year round documentary knowledge at Edinburgh Fest and filmhouse

CMI announces strategic partnership with Scottish Documentary Institute


Edinburgh Scotland, 4 November 2010; The Centre for the Moving Image (CMI) and the Scottish Documentary Institute have announced a new strategic partnership that will see both parties collaborate to provide documentary makers with unique platforms to attract audiences for their works and to broaden the access point for consumers to experience Scottish documentary film-making. The partnership will also include building a year round documentary knowledge and learning programme at Filmhouse and Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Scottish Documentary Institute is the leading centre for documentary training and education in Scotland and based at Screen Academy Edinburgh College of Art. It produces the award winning Bridging the Gap short documentary series, which has been honoured with BAFTAs, Grierson and European Film Award nominations and festival screenings world-wide. It also hosts top level training for documentary producers to access the international market via its Interdoc programme, The annual Edinburgh Pitch and Doc Week during Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Noe Mendelle, Director of Scottish Documentary Institute said: “We believe that documentary film should have a firm place at the core of Scotland’s creative industries and continue to put forward our views at such a crucial point in time for cultural policymaking. We’re very happy to go forward into 2011 with a closer working partnership with the CMI, to enhance the documentary provision for Edinburgh and Scotland, and to grow Scotland’s reputation for outstanding documentary practice internationally. “

Gavin Miller, CEO of the CMI said: “Documentary film making plays an important part of the wider moving image space in Scotland and in the UK. We’re delighted to be able to partner with the Scottish Documentary Institute to both showcase documentary film making to new and wider audiences through our existing distribution channels and to help shape a year round knowledge and learning programme for Scottish and UK talent at both Filmhouse and Edinburgh International Film Festival.

Noe Mendelle added: “We bring many filmmakers of note to Edinburgh for workshops and seminars - in the past we have hosted the likes of Nicholas Philibert, Nick Broomfield, Paul Watson, Kim Longinotto, Sergey Dvortsevoy, James Longley, Thomas Riedelsheimer, Peter Liechti & Michael Glawogger. We are delighted to bring these master filmmakers to a wider public attention through our collaboration with CMI. “

“SDI’s ethos is to bring together new and old filmmakers and decision makers, so that they can learn from each other and discover new talent and new ways of doing things. That’s why our initiatives such as Bridging the Gap and Interdoc have been so successful”

The first collaboration between the CMI and SDI is a session on “How to get to Cannes”, with Gaëlle Vidalie, a programmer from Cannes, Director’s Fortnight on 12th November, who has been invited to give a talk about Cannes and to connect with the Scottish film scene.