The ninth annual FOCAL International Awards in association with AP Archive took place last night at The Lancaster London Hotel, with winning entries spanning the decades and unearthing stunning footage illustrating a wide variety of topics, including life in the former USSR, racial segregation, the passion of motor racing and the chilling beauty of degraded film.   The standout project at this year's awards was Senna (Working Title/Universal Pictu...

  FOCAL INTERNATIONAL AWARDS 2012   Ninth annual Awards in association with AP Archive to celebrate the best in the world of footage Celebrity host announced for 2nd May ceremony TICKETS ON SALE NOW!   FOCAL International, the International Federation of Commercial Audio-visual Libraries, has announced that tickets are now available for the ninth annual FOCAL International awards in associatio...

Ninth Annual Awards celebrate the best in the world of footage FOCAL International, the international Federation of Commercial Audio-visual Libraries, has now announced the shortlist of nominations for the ninth annual FOCAL International awards in association with AP Archive. The nominations are diverse in terms of both geography and subject matter with projects telling stories that range from politics and war to F1 racing and football.   The BAFTA-wi...

Suddenly, everything's coming up doc-fests. Munich's has just ended (a well-run event organised in the famous  Film Museum and other  gemuetlich venues around the Bavarian capital since 1991), Sheffield's has just announced the complete programme for its event which  moves dates from autumn to next month, and the now stand-alone Edinburgh International Film Festival, with its new team and slenderer budget, returns to its post-war orgins with a strong focus on the documentary for its 65th...

  London based Asif Kapadia is of Indian origin with antecedents in Gujarat State. His debut work, the short film The Sheep Thief was set in his home State. I saw  his first feature film, The Warrior which was also set in India, at a special screening held at the British Council in Mumbai. The film starred Irrfan Khan, which sparked this gifted actor’s international career. Kapadia's new award winning documentary tells the story of Ayrton Senna, who, in the mid-1980s, expl...