The ninth edition of the international music documentary festival Doc’n’Rhythm ended last night with the award ceremony at the Yugoslav Cinematheque. According to the jury’s decision, the winning film of this year’s festival is the documentary Dreamers by Vladimir Petrović, while the audience award goes to the film “Blues Highway” by Branka Glavonjić and Miodrag Kolarić.
From September 30th to October 3rd, 22 films from 13 countries were shown, as part of the Notebook program, discussions were held about three books that dealt with different musical topics and genres, such as current pop music, the South Wind phenomenon, the biography of the rock and roll great Bob Dylan. Two exceptional concerts were part of the festival, and there were guests from Poland, Croatia, Slovenia, Montenegro and Macedonia . A unique event within this program was the promotion of the book on the omnibus film The Fall of Rock n’ Roll. As in previous years, the Work’in’Progress section brought the presentation of four music documentaries in production. In the program “Poland in Focus”, which was realized in cooperation with the Polish Institute in Belgrade, three fantastic documentaries were shown.
Blues Highway film crew; PHOTO: Marina Pešić
“This year is very important for our festival – we started cooperation with the Center of Belgrade Festivals, the program took place at two new locations – in the Yugoslav Cinematheque and on Dorćol Platz. Four exciting festival days are behind us. Dok’n’Ritam 9 took place under the slogan “Rhythm in woman, Woman in rhythm”. Most of the films in the program were made to female authors or have female figures as the main protagonists,” said the founder and artistic director Sandra Rančić at the closing of the festival.
The main prize, which went to the film Dreamers, consists of a financial fund donated by the Film Center Serbia and a replica of the sculpture of the sculptor Witold Koshir. In addition to the main prize, the jury consisting of Aleksandra Kovač, Ivan Velisavljević and Pavle Terzić awarded special awards to the film Shout directed by Agnieszka Zwiefka, and Grandpa Guru by Silvio Mirosnicenko.
FOTO: Marina Pešić
The closing film Let the Canary Sing, directed by Alison Ellwood, was dedicated to Cindy Lauper, an artist and activist, who made a mark on the global cultural scene with a career spanning more than half a century, and Dok’n’Rhythm wrapped up with a party on Dorćol Platz, where DJ Marina Đorđević played selected female vocals, in accordance with the motto of this year’s festival. The festival opened this year with the Serbian premiere of the film Praslovan, about Zoran Predin.
The festival is organized by the Association Dok’n’Ritam and the Center of Belgrade Festivals (CEBEF). The festival was supported by the Ministry of Culture, SOKOJ, Film Center Serbia, the Polish Institute in Belgrade and the Ministry of Culture of North Macedonia.