Since turning five last March, the iRep International Documentary Film Festival has continued to make waves on the international scene.
Only three weeks ago, iREP was the co-host of the Dok.Network Africa programme at the 30th Anniversary edition of the Dok.Fest Munich, one of the prime documentary film festivals in Europe.
The event, held at the prestigious Museum Funf Kontinente Munich, witnessed an impressive diverse audience. The special session screened among others the film by Camilla Nielsson (Denmark) titled The Democrats and Rehad Desai’s compelling Miners’ Shot Down (South Africa) as well as La Sirene De Faso Fani by Michel K. Zongo (Burkina Faso).
iREP also presented a dynamic panel discussion on documentary’s political role in emerging democracies in Africa. Rens van Munster of the Danish Institute for International Studies presented a talk with very interesting perspectives on the political dimensions of documentary filmmaking.
Femi Odugbemi, co-founder and executive director of iREP, was a featured speaker. He also presented Miners’ Shot Down on behalf of South African director, Desai. The film was curated and recommended to Dok.Fest 2015 by iREP and had earlier featured as part of the screened films at the iREP 2014.
The idea of Africa Day had been inspired by the collaboration between DOK.Fest and iREP, which began three years ago. The collaboration has also yielded another opportunity, as DOK.Fest has asked iREP to send in one of its operation staff to once again undertake a six-week internship starting in November. The cooperation and collaboration between iREP and DOK.Fest had been mid-wifed by the Goethe-Institut, Nigeria, which had also been the intermediary of the relationship between iREP and the Ag-Dok – the highly influential German association of independent film producers, which, in the past four years, has brought groups of German filmmakers to every edition of the yearly iREP festival.
Shortly after this year’s IREP festival (March 22 to 24) at the Freedom Park, Lagos, the Forum received a gladdening news from Cape Town in South Africa that it should send a representative to the Encounters Documentary Film Festival – a highly competitive international documentary film workshop and industry gathering – for a three-week training and internship that would usher collaborative programming.
iREP 2015 Festival Manager, Lanre Olupona, has since left for South Africa on that attachment. He will work and understudy the programming team of Encounters Festival over an intensive three weeks, to learn best practices in festival operations and management.
Only two years ago, another iREP festival manager, Toyin Poju-Oyemade, was in Munich, Germany, to understudy the operations of the Dok.Fest Documentary Festival as well. All of these exchanges have strengthened iREP’s global network and enshrined global best practices in its operations.
This month, at the prestigious Sheffield Documentary Film Festival UK, Odugbemi will also be a featured speaker on the subject of ‘Imperialism or Inquiry – How Fair is Foreign Filming?’ a major panel of the Documentary Campus Industry Conference. He will as well be meeting several global documentary filmmakers to schedule films for the 2016 iREP Festival.
In July, Odugbemi will also be attending the People2People Conference scheduled to be hosted by the 2015 Durban International Film Festival (DIFF) in South Africa.
Odugbemi is on the Advisory Board of the People2People Conference, and iREP is a founding signatory to the Documentary Network Africa (DNA), an influential documentary platform featuring filmmakers from over 45 countries in the continent.
The monthly screening by iREP resumes today, after the disruption by the electioneering timetable, at the Freedom Park, Lagos, with the tribute screening of the film, Uncommon Service, produced by Deji Adesanya. It is based on the unusual story of patriotism and community service by Dr. Yombo Awojobi, a medical doctor, inventor, engineer, philosopher, all rolled into one.
Dr. Awojobi died a few weeks ago.
