Presentation

MDOC - Melgaço International Documentary Film Festival, organized by the Municipality of Melgaço and the AO NORTE Association, intends to promote and disclose social and ethnographic cinema, reflecting with the films about identity, memory and border, and to contribute for an audiovisual archive about the territory.

MDOC/2021 is marked by the following main components:

• EXHIBITION OF DOCUMENTARIES in the running for the Jean-Loup Passek Award. MDOC will select documentaries that reflect the author’s point of view on social, individual and cultural issues related with identity, memory and border.

• JEAN-LOUP PASSEK AWARD FOR BEST FILM. The Official Jury, which in 2021 will be composed by Alessandro Negrini (Italian director and screenwriter), Alfonso Palazón Meseguer (Professor of Audiovisual Communication at the Faculty of Sciences of Communication of Universidade Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid, director, producer and screenwriter), Jane Pinheiro (Professor of Visual Arts and Photography, Cinema and Video at the College of Application of the Federal University of Pernambuco – UFPE), Julia Kushnarenko (Russian director), and Susana de Sousa Dias (Portuguese director), will assign a trophy plus a monetary prize to the winners:
− Best international feature film – 3000 Euros;
− Best international short or medium-length film – 1500 Euros;
− Best Portuguese documentary (Portuguese production / direction) – 1000 Euros.

• D. QUIXOTE PRIZE awarded by the Jury of the International Federation of Film Clubs. The Don Quixote Prize from the IFFS – International Federation of Film Clubs consists of a diploma plus the worldwide promotion of the winning film throughout the network of film clubs.

• JEAN-LOUP PASSEK AWARD FOR BEST FILM POSTER, starting in 2021, it is promoted by the Melgaço Museum of Cinema– Jean-Loup Passek and MDOC – Melgaço International Documentary Festival. The award will be attributed to an original poster created to promote a documentary, animation or fictional film with Portuguese or Galician production and is worth 2,000 Euros (two thousand Euros), assigned to the winning designer or creative team. The Jury of the Jean-Loup Passek Award for best film poster will be nominated by the MDOC organization committee and consists of three renowned personalities linked to design, cinema and communication.

• OFF SCREEN SUMMER COURSE, a meeting for reflection, debate and development of research and creative practices in the fields of Cinema, Social Sciences, Arts and Communication Sciences.
The Summer Course 2021 focuses on the general theme of the Melgaço International Documentary Festival - Identity, Memory and Border and addresses issues of First Person Narratives from research projects and audiovisual production and digital narratives. It also intends to articulate and bring together creative experiences from diverse backgrounds – filmmakers, scientific and artistic associations, university researchers and cultural producers, different countries and continents.
The Summer Course is coordinated by José da Silva Ribeiro and is an initiative of AO NORTE, through its Group of Film Studies and Digital Narratives in collaboration with the Municipality of Melgaço, ANPAP – National Association of Professionals in Visual Arts, the Federal University of Goiás, Universidade Rey Juan Carlos of Madrid, the Federal University of Pará, the Federal University of Pernambuco, the Jean Rouch Foundation, the Pará Ethnographic Film Festival (Grupo Visagem / PPGSA-UFPA) and the Recife International Ethnographic Film Festival.

• FRONTAL SHOT FILM AND PHOTOGRAPHY RESIDENCIES that produce documentaries and photographic projects about the region in each edition of the Festival. Its main objectives are the promotion of documentary film and the emergence of new technical and artistic teams; and contribute to an audiovisual archive about Melgaço and its territory, whilst providing the Memória e Fronteira Museum with films about the region’s intangible heritage.
Frontal Shot is addressed to all those who have recently completed their education or final-year students attending Higher Education Film and Audiovisual Schools.
Pedro Sena Nunes is the director / tutor with a long professional and pedagogical experience, who will guide the directing of documentaries, coordinate the planning of tasks and provide a systematic reflection on the work produced on a daily basis. These processes will be supported by a technical and operational team from the AO NORTE Association.

• KINO MEETING, an international meeting of educational film services. Commonly associated with young audiences, film literacy should extend to other publics that are often disregarded by educational services and that can benefit from Cinema as a space for interpretation and expression. Cinematographic literacy projects aimed at children and adults with physical or mental disabilities, marginalized or at-risk audiences can contribute to cultural plurality and cinematographic education, broadening the spectrum of audiences and supporting the sharing of knowledge and values from Cinema.
The institutions invited to the 2021 edition of the Kino Meeting will present innovative and challenging projects, aimed at lesser common audiences: blind, autistic, people with Down syndrome, prisoners, Roma gypsies youth…
Technological development has facilitated access to equipment and film-making processes, and the empirical experience gives each and every project an added interest, opening up a kaleidoscope of interpretations of the world from the perspectives and sensibilities of those who produce the films, from the position of different audiences. Kino Meeting is coordinated by Patrícia Nogueira.

• WHO ARE WE HERE? Is a project that interrogates the geographic space and local society, this year dedicated to the Union of Parishes of Castro Laboreiro and Lamas de Mouro, in the municipality of Melgaço.
The project’s visibility will use the following resources:

• Audiovisual record – Spoken Photographies
• An exhibition of documentary photography, to be inaugurated at Casa da Cultura in Melgaço during MDOC – Melgaço International Documentary Festival
• A catalog on the documentary photography exhibition
• The collection and digitalization of photographs from family albums of inhabitants of Castro Laboreiro and Lamas de Mouro
• A photography exhibition based on family albums, opening in the parishes of Castro Laboreiro and Lamas de Mouro
• A publication about all work undertaken in the project. Produced by AO NORTE, this project will be coordinated by Álvaro Domingues, executive produced by Rui Ramos and will have the collaboration of Albertino Gonçalves, Carlos Eduardo Viana, Daniel Maciel, Miguel Arieira, Daniel Deira and João Gigante.