BEST.DOKS - 25 years of DOK.fest Munich
The International Documentary Film Festival was founded in 1985 by the Munich documentary filmmakers association (AG Dok). The declared goal was a "festival of the festivals" for the Munich audience, with an emphasis on the promotion of creative documentary films, which at the time played only a marginal role in movie theatres in West-Germany.
Under Gudrun Geyer's influence and direction, a large, internationally recognized festival arose, in the mid-nineties comparable only to the festivals in Amsterdam, Nyon, Yamagata or Leipzig. Almost all internationally renowned documentary filmmakers have visited Munich in the past two decades.
The retrospectives on Indian, Cuban, Russian and Arabian documentary cinema that were realized through intense personal engagement, as well as the tributes to Alexandr Sokurov, Louis Malle, Raymond Depardon, Jean Rouch, Robert Kramer, Molly Dineen, Nurith Aviv, Gisela Tuchtenhagen and Gudrun Geyers last retrospective in 2001 on "100 years of animal films" are legendary.
The number of films grew over the years and peaked in 2001 with 200 films at the 16th International Documentary Film Festival.
Through the years, five categories and different awards have been established.
In the
International Competition the Bavarian Television Documentary Film Prize, worth 10.000 EUR is awarded by an independent international jury. The International programme features around 50 films.The section Horizons is dedicated to films from Latin America, Africa, Asia, the Near and Middle East and the CIS, regions, where economic and political factors make it extremely difficult to produce documentary films. The interest in the few films from there is all the greater. They give insight to the worlds, fates and political conflicts, which it is difficult to find anything out about here through the media.
The section New Films from Bavaria has become an important platform for documentary films produced in Bavaria, the Talent Award of the Bavarian Film Commission is dedicated to films which are desserving an international audience.
Following the 16th International Documentary Film Festival that reached a climax with about 200 films and over 10.000 visitors in 2001, Gudrun Geyer resigned from office.
A project group very soon gave birth to the International Documentary Film Festival Association with the goal to preserve and advance the festival.
Since 2002, under its new director Hermann Barth, DOK.FEST Munich has been developing towards one of the worldwide most important festivals for feature length creative documentaries, a "best-of"-festival, not obliged to show world premieres, but to reflect what may be - from a certain distance - kept as the most interesting creative documentaries of the year.
