The iRepresent Documentary Film Festival, whose fifth edition took place in March, 2015, continues to soar higher as it gains more global recognition. Recently, iREP was the Co-Host of the Dok.Network Africa programme at the 30th edition of the Dok.Fest Munich, one of the prime documentary film festivals in Europe. Femi Odugbemi, Co-founder and Executive Director of IREP was a featured Speaker. He also presented Miners’ Shot Down on behalf of South African director, Rehad Desai.
he collaboration has also yielded another opportunity as DOK.Fest has asked iREP to send in one of its operation staff to once again undertake a six-week internship starting in November, 2015. The cooperation between iREP and DOK.Fest was midwifed by the Goethe Institute, Lagos, which had also been the intermediary of the relationship between iREP and the Ag-Dok – the highly influential German association of independent film producers, which in the past four years, has brought groups of German film-makers to every edition of the yearly iREP festival.
Shortly after staging this year’s iREP festival in March at the Freedom Park, Lagos, iREP received gladdening news from Cape Town in South Africa that it should send a representative to the Encounters Documentary Film Festival – a highly competitive international documentary film workshop and industry gathering for a three-week training and internship that will usher in collaborative programming. iREP 2015 Festival Manager, Lanre Olupona, went to South Africa on that attachment, where he worked and understudied the programming team of Encounters Festival over an intensive 3-week period with a view to learning best practice in festival operations and management. It will be recalled that 2 years ago, another IREP Festival Manager, Toyin Poju-Oyemade, was in Munich, Germany to understudy the operations of the Dok.Fest Documentary Festival as well. All of these exchanges have strengthened IREP’s global network and enshrined global best practice in its operations.
Earlier in June, 2015, at the prestigious Sheffield Documentary Film Festival, UK, Femi Odugbemi also spoke on the subject of “Imperialism or Inquiry – How fair is Foreign Filming?”, a major panel of the Documentary Campus Industry Conference.
In July, Odugbemi will also be attending the People2People Conference scheduled for the 2015 Durban International Film Festival in South Africa. Odugbemi is on the Advisory Board of the People2People Conference and iREP is a founding signatory to the Documentary Network Africa, DNA, an influential documentary platform; featuring film-makers from over 45 countries in the continent.
Source: nollywoodmindspace.com