Location Copenhagen, Denmark No. of films 200 | Founded 2003 Website www.cphdox.dk | |
CPH:DOX is the official name for the Copenhagen International Documentary Festival, an international documentary film festival established in 2003 and held annually in Copenhagen, Denmark. CPH:DOX has since grown to become one of the largest documentary film festivals in Europe with 91.400 admissions in 2015.
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CPH:DOX is devoted to supporting independent and innovative film and to present contemporary non-fiction, art cinema and experimental film. The festival has been recognized for its sharp and daring programme profile with a special focus on exploring the hybrid field between documentary practice and various type of staging - sometimes to controversial effect, as when Harmony Korine won the CPH:DOX Award in 2009 for his film Trash Humpers.
Besides its seven international competitions, the festival presents parallel curated and guest curated sections. In recent years, artists and filmmakers such as Harmony Korine, Animal Collective, Nan Goldin, Douglas Gordon, Ben Rivers & Ben Russell, Ai Weiwei, The Yes Men, Olafur Eliasson and Naomi Klein & Avi Lewis have curated film programmes exclusively for CPH:DOX. Parallel to this the festival has been presenting retrospective programmes with among others Phillippe Grandrieux, Nathalie Djurberg, Vincent Moon, Charles Atlas, and James Benning & Sadie Benning, as well as installations and exhibitions film and video artists, among them Michelangelo Frammartino, Keren Cytter and Charles Atlas.
The festival also hosts seminars, debates and events as well as the curated concert series AUDIO:VISUALS, where bands and artists such as Animal Collective, The Knife, John Maus, Nan Goldin & Genesis P-Orridge, Patti Smith, Beach House have been performing to original work created for the occasion by visual artists.
CPH:DOX also presents a number of other initiatives parallel to the festival itself. The industry platform CPH:FORUM, with the attached CPH:MARKET for buyers and programmers, is a financing and co-production forum as well as a networking facility which takes place for three days during the festival. In 2011, the related ART:FILM branch was launched with the aim to facilitate the development and actual production of artists' films in the feature length format.
In 2009, the festival launched the international talent development and film production workshop CPH:LAB (formerly known as DOX:LAB) where around 20 filmmakers are invited each year to develop and direct a film in teams of two. CPH:LAB has been a great success with films premiering and winning prizes at film festivals such as Venice, the Berlinale, Rotterdam, and elsewhere.
In 2013, CPH:DOX launched the transmedia initiative SWIM - Scandinavian World of Innovative Media - to stimulate innovation and new ways of thinking within media in the Region of Øresund. The project is a collaboration between CPH:DOX, New Danish Screen, Film i Skåne and BoostHbg and is co-financed by Interreg IVA.
Following the 2015 edition of CPH:DOX, the festival announced that it will change its dates from November to March. The next edition of CPH:DOX will be held from March 16 - 26.
Awards
Juries hand out prizes in six international competition programmes: