Ally Derks Honored In Tel Aviv

Ally Derks

Friday, March 16---- Ally Derks, the director of the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), has received a Lifetime Achievement Award for the vital role she has played in the development and recognition of the documentary genre worldwide. The award was presented to Derks last evening during the opening of the Docaviv Documentary Festival. The award was presented by the ambassador of the European Commission in Israel. Docaviv’s organisation chose to present Derks with this special distinction in part to commemorate IDFA’s twentieth anniversary this year.

In 1988, Derks founded IDFA as a successor of the educational film festival Festikon. The new festival’s main goal was to put the spotlight back on the international, creative documentary. In the past 20 years, the festival has grown from a modest event with 3,000 visitors into the largest documentary institute in the world.

As part of IDFA’s twentieth anniversary celebrations, the festival has organised a special Best of IDFA programme at several documentary festivals, including Yunfest in China and Adelaide Filmfestival in Australia. A selection of some of the most successful films that have screened at IDFA in past years will also be shown at Docaviv. These documentaries include Belovy (Russia, 1993) by Victor Kossakovsky, Capturing the Friedmans (USA, 2003) by Andrew Jarecki, Gimme Shelter (USA, 1969) by Albert and David Maysles, O Amor Natural (The Netherlands, 1996) by Heddy Honigmann, and Tanjuska and the 7 Devils (Finland, 1993) by Pirjo Honkasalo.

Ally Derks will be giving a masterclass at Docaviv on March 19, in which she will discuss her view of documentary cinema worldwide. Docaviv is an annual documentary festival which is heightening the awareness and popularity of the non-fiction film in Israel. For more information on DocAviv, which runs through March 20, visit the Festival's website: www.docaviv.co.il.

Sandy Mandelberger, Awards Watch Editor