• English

Christoph Warrack

Sunday 15th March
18:00-19:00

In this workshop we’ll begin by unpacking the old cliche that “it’s best to shoot drama as a documentary, and vice versa”. Where is the line between fact and fiction: is it for the filmmaker to draw, or the subject? When is it appropriate to bring the techniques of documentary to drama? What are the hazards of thinking dramatically about a doc? We’ll look at clips of major films which have done both, consider reasons for the recent revival in non-fiction cinema, and debate the role of the filmmaker in the shifting political and digital boundaries of the new century.

Christoph Warrack

Since his debut short drama, Subterfugue, in 1999, Christoph’s short films have been screened at international festivals including Toronto, London, Brest and Tehran, and on TV, won several nominations and the 2007 Redemptive Storyteller Award in the US for The Survivor. His first documentary, Elegy for the Union, about the end of the Soviet Union in Central Asia, was screened in London cinemas by DocHouse and Critic’s Choice in TimeOut. Christoph is currently at work on a feature about Israeli and Palestinian cinema, for which he spent four weeks shooting in the region during the recent Gaza war. As a writer he has collaborated with the directors Pawel Pawlikowski and Richard Johnson. In 2005 he founded the Open Film Club for homeless people in London, which has welcomed filmmakers including Ken Loach, Beeban Kidron and Mike Leigh. He writes on film for the Times Literary Supplement.