Documentary Edge at international summit

Documentary Edge Festival, Australasia’s leading documentary film festival, has just completed their participation at this year’s Magnolia International Documentary Awards held in Shanghai, China.

The Summit of International Documentary Presidents brought together the top documentary festivals across the world in a prestigious event discussing such questions as “what’s the difference between criterions of different major documentary festivals?” and “what’s the ultimate value of an outstanding documentary?”

Co-director of the New Zealand Festival, Alex Lee, joined the panel that included heads of the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), Hot Docs (Canada), the International Leipzig Festival for Documentary and Animated Film (DOK Leipzig), the Yamagata International Documentary Festival (YDIFF), the Guangzhou International Documentary Festival (GZDOC) and the president of MIDA itself. IDFA is the largest documentary festival in the world attracting over 160,000 audiences and Hot Docs is the largest American documentary festival with over 120,000 audiences. Dok Leipzig is the oldest documentary festival in the world having begun in 1955 and YDIFF is the premier documentary festival in Japan. GZDOC and Documentary Edge signed a Memorandum of Understanding last year in Guangzhou.

"This was an amazing opportunity for Documentary Edge and New Zealand to be established as a leading documentary festival destination," Lee commented regarding his involvement at the summit.

Documentary Edge was the only festival from the region invited in this prestigious event. Alex Lee has been interviewed by Shanghai’s International Channel Television and Documentary Channel about NZ’s documentary film festival.

More information:

For more information on MIDA visit http://www.midadoc.org/

For information on Documentary Edge, visit www.documentaryedge.org.nz

For media inquires, contact
Dan Shanan at Documentary Edge

Phone +64 9 360 0329/ Email info@documentaryedge.org.nz