Messages from the Presidents of Juries
Dear Guests, dear organizing committee of the Golden Tree documentary film festival 2021:
I feel honored to be the President of the International Jury to open the Awarding ceremony in Paris. Theme of the Festival was this year “Culture Roots: Nature Tells us”. That is a broad theme covering as well cultural, social and historical phenomenon.
I want to thank the Jury consisting of the filmmakers and producers’ colleagues Mathieu Ageron from Paris, Guille Isa from Peru, Gennady Kofman from Ukraine, Jianjun Lei from China, Kenichi Imamura
from Japan, Saitabao Kaiyare from Kenya – who is present -and myself from Frankfurt Germany, where GT started in 2016.
We had to review 41 films with an overall length of more than 31 hours. In the end we awarded 10 Films in 9 categories.
Sure, to be awarded at Golden Tree documentary film festival is a special honor – but the other way round all the film, we have seen, were interesting and amazing pieces of documentary art.
We can´t start here a discussion what is a good documentary, but for my documentary means to open new views into unknown situations and as well open eyes for general subject beyond the displayed images.
I want to express some quotes from Films I have seen that impresses my very strong and are in a way essential for documentary filmmaking:
Art need a vision as forward-looking as possible. Art needs to see beyond the sight. (from Blind Vision
Italy, director Dario Butelli)
To show the inner world of the character, I think that is the task of a very good photographer (Return to the red flag canal, China, director Xiaowei Li)
Art is life – Art is to take the time to observe our surrounding (The Whisper of the Marimba, Germany, director Greta-Marie Becker)
Just today film journalists and experts around the world recognize that documentary films seem partly to be more important than feature film.
There are still not really “Golden Times” for documentary films, concerning budgets and distribution, but I hope “Golden Tree” and other important film festivals will contribute to promote documentary all over the word.
I feel honored to be the President of the International Jury to open the Awarding ceremony in Paris. Theme of the Festival was this year “Culture Roots: Nature Tells us”. That is a broad theme covering as well cultural, social and historical phenomenon.
I want to thank the Jury consisting of the filmmakers and producers’ colleagues Mathieu Ageron from Paris, Guille Isa from Peru, Gennady Kofman from Ukraine, Jianjun Lei from China, Kenichi Imamura
from Japan, Saitabao Kaiyare from Kenya – who is present -and myself from Frankfurt Germany, where GT started in 2016.
We had to review 41 films with an overall length of more than 31 hours. In the end we awarded 10 Films in 9 categories.
Sure, to be awarded at Golden Tree documentary film festival is a special honor – but the other way round all the film, we have seen, were interesting and amazing pieces of documentary art.
We can´t start here a discussion what is a good documentary, but for my documentary means to open new views into unknown situations and as well open eyes for general subject beyond the displayed images.
I want to express some quotes from Films I have seen that impresses my very strong and are in a way essential for documentary filmmaking:
Art need a vision as forward-looking as possible. Art needs to see beyond the sight. (from Blind Vision
Italy, director Dario Butelli)
To show the inner world of the character, I think that is the task of a very good photographer (Return to the red flag canal, China, director Xiaowei Li)
Art is life – Art is to take the time to observe our surrounding (The Whisper of the Marimba, Germany, director Greta-Marie Becker)
Just today film journalists and experts around the world recognize that documentary films seem partly to be more important than feature film.
There are still not really “Golden Times” for documentary films, concerning budgets and distribution, but I hope “Golden Tree” and other important film festivals will contribute to promote documentary all over the word.