The Need For A Documentary Film Festival
One’s love for cinema is not something that “happens”, but (also) something one can learn to love and appreciate. Documentary film festival DokMa, which will take place in the first week of November in the Slovenian city of Maribor, wants and believes it is necessary to constantly broaden intellectual and cultural horizons of everybody who consider themselves part of the (film-loving) community.
The need to have a festival, whose primary task would be presenting only documentary films, is simple and rather saddening. It is a fact that film and cinema still carry the »aura« of cheap and commercial, and in terms of artistic value aren’t equal to the canonized institutions of for example theater and opera. The genre of documentary film is therefore pushed to the very margins of public artistic and cultural conscience.
This primitive and unappreciative attitude towards the variety of expressions found in art and culture in general is the main reason why the art of (documentary) filmmaking, its significance and range that reach beyond its own cinematic contexts, like initiating and developing social, political, artistic and cultural engagement, remain unknown to the “uninitiated” public and only further diminishes the level of (cinematic) culture in Slovenia.
DokMa is thus dedicated to and produced for those who love cinema unconditionally, for those who consider the art of film as one of the most powerful and inspiring forces available to human kind, for those who seek free zones for experimental life styles, philosophies and views, and those who understand that it is necessary and possible to counteract the devastating consumer mentality of modern “developed” societies.