IDFA International Documentary Festival Amsterdam

Pathe Tuschinski Foyer 

Thursday, November 20------The International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, better known for its acronym of IDFA, is one of the world's great non-fiction film events. It is truly an international celebration, with more than 300 documentaries screenings, along with daily debates and talkshows, and the accompanying Forum, Docs for Sale and IDFAcademy professional events. Everything is centered around the new home of the Festival in and around Amsterdam's famed Rembrandtplein.

IDFA opens tonight with one of its local documentary masters. Dutch artist Renzo Martens will present the premiere of Episode 3, an investigation into the emotional and economic value of Africa's most significant export product: filmed poverty. In the film, Martens reveals that, as with other raw materials such as cocoa and gold, the suppliers of this African export product themselves hardly profit at all from the huge amounts of money made from their poverty. In response, the filmmaker has launched an emancipation program in which he makes Congo ’s poor aware of their primary capital resource: their poverty.

The film, which is included in the IDFA First Appearance Competition, was pitched as a project at the Forum in 2007. Martens’ first film, Episode 1, also screened at IDFA, in 2004. The film reflects the Festival's concern about international themes and the complex financial, social and political relations between the "first world" of Europe and North America and the "third world" of Africa and Asia. At this year's Festival, a striking number of films deal with Africa and the perceptions of this continent presented in the West. The provocative subject matter will certainly provoke discussions and debates, particularly in light of the worldwide economic disaster.

The world premiere of Episode 3 is to be held at one of Europe's most beautiful and classic cinemas, the Pathe Tuschinski, and is timed to parallel the opening of an exhibition by Martens at the famed Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam. For more information on this and other films to be presented over the next 10 days, visit the Festival's English language website: http://www.idfa.nl/en.aspx