DOX BOX
DOX BOX (Arabic: أيام سينما الواقع) was established and launched in Syria in 2008 as an annual documentary film festival in financial support of international organisations (like The Prince Claus Fund, The IDFA Bertha Fund, International Media Support, The British Council, French Cultural Centre, Danish Cultural Centre and others).
DOX BOX was organised by a Syrian production company, Proaction Film, as a non-profit, free admission event to spread awareness and increase interest in documentaries. In its second edition, DOX BOX 09, it reached 12000 admissions according to the festival's website.[1]
In March 2012, The organizers of DOX BOX festival decided to refrain from holding its fifth edition in protest against the killing and oppression of civilians in Syria according to a statement released on the official festival site. On 15 and 16 March 2012, a "DOX BOX Global Day" screening was launched and exhibited several Syrian documentary movies in 39 cities across the world.
Festival program
DOX BOX shows annually a selection of 40+ international creative-documentary films from around the world, to present the genre to the Syrian audience and at presenting regional documentaries. Among such screenings included documentary films such as The Beloves by Russian director Viktor Kossakovsky, The Eye Above The Well by Dutch director Johan van der Keuken, The 3 Rooms of Melancholia by Finnish filmmaker Pirjo Honkasalo, a retrospective of France's Nicolas Philibert, old masterpieces like Jean Vigo's À propos de Nice, and recent productions such as The Mother by Switzerland's Antoine Cattin, The One Man Village by Lebanese Simon El Haber, The English Surgeon by Australian Geoffrey Smith, among many others.
Previous festival's guests included Patricio Guzman, D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus, Pirjo Honkasalo, Nicolas Philibert, Niels Pagh Andersen, Malek Bensmail, and Jehane Noujaim, among others. Among guests were documentary experts and tutors such as Tue Steen Muller, Isabel Arrate, Mikael Opstrup have been attending the festival every year.
The activities of DOX BOX usually split into public screenings and professional/capacity-building and networking activities. Screenings are divided into 5 sections, the Official Selection, where films from around the world compete for the Damascus Audience Award (the very first audience award to be introduced in Syria), and two thematic sidebar selections (in 2009 these were: Voices of Women & Notes on War), then a "Meet The Master" section where four films of a master of the documentary art are shown in the presence of the filmmaker, and finally a selection of four films that took the documentary world by storm most recently. DOX BOX screenings are with English and Arabic subtitles and of free admission.
Organizers and sponsors
DOX BOX operates in close collaboration with the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam and the European Documentary Network,[2] in addition to other festivals, such as DocPoint Helsinki and the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival.
Support and grant-making organisations are supporting DOX BOX annually, these include The Netherlands' Prince Claus Fund, Denmark's KVINFO, Germany's Goethe Institute and Heinrich Boell Foundation, and the newly established regional fund The Arab Fund for Art and Culture, among others. DOX BOX, which is annual and runs in 3 Syrian cities, Damascus, Homs and Tartus, is organised by two Syrian filmmakers, Diana El Jeiroudi and Orwa Nyrabia, among others. DOX BOX was also supported by several volunteers who contributed towards writing, editing and translation of articles (English-Arabic)