Open City Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val announces its most inclu­sive line-up ever

The Lon­don-based Open City Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val is all set and ready to launch online for its tenth edi­tion as a result of lock­down mea­sures. With 48 new films screen­ing on their web­site between 9 – 15 Sep­tem­ber, they will be accom­pa­nied by a num­ber of pan­els and inter­views, as well as a trove of free short films, avail­able on-demand through­out the fes­ti­val period.

The announce­ment of the full pro­gramme reveals that 54 per cent of direc­tors pre­sent­ing new work iden­ti­fy as female or non-bina­ry. Events include film­mak­er Court­ney Stephens’ pre­sen­ta­tion of ​‘home trav­el­ogues’ shot by women in the 1920s, and mas­ter­class­es from direc­tor Maite Alber­di and edi­tor Anne Fabi­ni. With sub­jects rang­ing from ​‘the colo­nial gaze’ to ques­tions of author­ship, it promis­es to engage with con­tem­po­rary inter­na­tion­al issues.

The 2020 edi­tion will fea­ture four com­pe­ti­tions, with fea­ture films eli­gi­ble for the Open City Award and the Emerg­ing Film­mak­er Award. In addi­tion to the reg­u­lar UK Short Award, this year’s fes­ti­val will also intro­duce an Inter­na­tion­al Short Award as parts of the pro­gramme will be avail­able to stream world­wide for the first time.

There will also be an online ver­sion of their AR/VR/XR+ ​‘Expand­ed Real­i­ties’ exhi­bi­tion with brows­er-based access fea­tur­ing work from Tama­ra Shogaolu, Ingvild Isak­sen, and Hen­ri­et­ta Williams which will take audi­ences to space, via lock­down Lon­don, and the expe­ri­ence of LGBT+ asy­lum seek­ers. It cer­tain­ly seems Open City is tak­ing this oppor­tu­ni­ty to pio­neer new and acces­si­ble screen­ing expe­ri­ences while offer­ing excit­ing new points of view.

Open City Doc­u­men­tary Fes­ti­val runs 9 – 15 Sep­tem­ber. For more info vis­it opencity​lon​don​.com