Diane Weyermann.
Diane Weyermann, president of documentary film and television at Participant Media, will be among the headline speakers at AIDC 2019 as the event shines a light on international co-production and co-financing.
Weyermann will be joined on the ‘Working with the USA’ session by Elliott Whitton, head of development at New York-based not-for-profit film funder Cinereach, Marie Nelson, PBS VP, news and independent film, and Ranell Shubert, the International Documentary Association’s education programs manager.
Participant’s documentary slate includes Morgan Neville’s The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Joshua Oppenheimer’s The Look of Silence, Marc Silver’s 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets, Robert Gordon and Morgan Neville’s Best of Enemies, Davis Guggenheim’s He Named Me Malala and Bernardo Ruiz’s Kingdom of Shadows.
Among its extensive credits are the Oscar®-winners CITIZENFOUR and An Inconvenient Truth, Emmy®-winning Food, the Emmy®-nominated The Great Invisible as well as Chicago 10, Waiting for “Superman” and Darfur Now.
Before joining Participant in 2005 she was the director of the Sundance Institute’s documentary film program.
Registrations for AIDC 2019, to be held March 3-6 at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne, open today.
The Nordic Focus session will feature documentary commissioners from SVT (Axel Arno, Why Slavery?) and YLE (Erkko Lyytinen, Over the Limit) to talk about their recent successes as well as North/South co-production opportunities with Australia.
Among the attendees will be acquisitions executives from SBS, ABC, Screen Australia, VICE and BBC Studios Australia. These decision makers are part of AIDC’s larger marketplace which includes numerous pitching and networking opportunities for producers of all experience levels across documentary and factual forms. More than $100,000 of commissioning funds has already been committed.
Applications are now open for ‘Cut to the Chase’, AIDC’s program of structured one-on-one pitch meetings between producers and decision makers; and The FACTory, the public pitching forum for projects with national and international appeal.
In addition, filmmakers can enter the Pitch Australiana competition, a short-form documentary pitch co-presented by VICE Media and Screen Australia; and the Untold Australia pitch, in which SBS seeks new stories for the popular documentary strand.
Alice Burgin, AIDC CEO/conference director, said: “AIDC 2019 promises a program packed with sessions and guests responding to our theme The Bigger Picture. It’s about taking a step back to celebrate the eclectic ecosystem of the Australian non-fiction industry as well as the positive role we all can play as creative agents within the broader global filmmaking community.”
To register for AIDC 2019, go here.