Encuentros del Otro Cine EDOC (Encounters of the Other Cinema), is a non-competitive international documentary film festival

Documentary film festivals

Documentary film festivals are film festivals devoted solely to documentary film, which is a broad category of visual expression that is based on the attempt, in one fashion or another, to "document" reality....

 held annually in Ecuador

Ecuador

Ecuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America, along with Chile, that do not have a border...

 since 2002.

The main venues are located in the cities of Quito

Quito

San Francisco de Quito, most often called Quito , is the capital city of Ecuador in northwestern South America. It is located in north-central Ecuador in the Guayllabamba river basin, on the eastern slopes of Pichincha, an active stratovolcano in the Andes mountains...

 and Guayaquil

Guayaquil

Guayaquil , officially Santiago de Guayaquil , is the largest and the most populous city in Ecuador,with about 2.3 million inhabitants in the city and nearly 3.1 million in the metropolitan area, as well as that nation's main port...

, although a good part of the program is also screened in the cities of Cuenca

Cuenca, Ecuador

Cuenca is the capital of the Azuay Province. It is located in the highlands of Ecuador at about 2500 m above sea level...

, Manta

Manta

Manta is a mid-sized city in Manabí Province, Ecuador. It is the second most populous city in the province, the fifth most populous in the country and, economically, the third most important city of Ecuador. Manta has existed since Pre-Columbian times. It was a trading post for the Mantas....

, Ibarra

Ibarra

Ibarra is a surname of Basque origin meaning 'valley' or 'plain by the river'.*Places**Ibarra is the capital of the province of Imbabura in Ecuador.**Ibarra is also a locality in Guipúzcoa, Spain....

 and Portoviejo

Portoviejo

Portoviejo is a city in Ecuador, and the capital the Province of Manabí 30 km from the Pacific coast. . Also known as the city of the "Royal Tamarind Trees" for the beautiful trees found in the area...

. In the last edition, the festival attracted 15 thousand spectators and screened a total of 96 films from all over the world.

EDOC's program is divided into thematic sections, retrospective

Retrospective

Retrospective generally means to take a look back at events that already have taken place. For example, the term is used in medicine, describing a look back at a patient's medical history or lifestyle.-Music:...

s, a panorama of the contemporary documentary production and the traditional section ‘How we are seen, how we see ourselves’ that shows films on Ecuador by national and international filmmakers.

Among the retrospectives screened in EDOC there is the work of Jean Rouch

Jean Rouch

Jean Rouch was a French filmmaker and anthropologist.He is considered to be one of the founders of the cinéma vérité in France, which shared the aesthetics of the direct cinema spearheaded by Richard Leacock, D.A. Pennebaker and Albert and David Maysles...

, the Maysles brothers

Albert and David Maysles

Albert and David Maysles were a documentary filmmaking team whose cinéma vérité works include Salesman , Gimme Shelter and Grey Gardens . Their 1964 film on The Beatles forms the backbone of the DVD, The Beatles: The First U.S. Visit...

, Avi Mograbi

Avi Mograbi

Avi Mograbi is an Israeli documentary filmmaker. His films are often experimental in form and are highly critical of Israel's treatment of the Palestinian people....

, Johan van der Keuken

Johan van der Keuken

Johan van der Keuken was a Dutch documentary filmmaker, author, and photographer. In a career that spanned 42 years, Keuken produced 55 documentary films, six of which won eight awards. He also wrote nine books on photography and films, his field of interest...

, Ross McElwee

Ross McElwee

Ross McElwee is an American documentary filmmaker and cinematographer, and Harvard professor, known for his autobiographical films about his family and personal life, usually interwoven with an episodic journey of some sort. Many cultural aspects of his southern upbringing are present in his...

, Sergei Loznitsa

Sergei Loznitsa

Sergei Loznitsa is a Ukrainian director mostly known for his documentary films.-Biography:In 1987 he graduated from Kiev Polytechnic Institute as a mathematician. Between 1987 and 1991 he worked in the Institute of Cybernetics. He developed expert systems, systems of design-making and work on...

, Nicolas Philibert, Patricio Guzmán

Patricio Guzmán

Patricio Guzmán Lozanes is a Chilean documentary film director. He is internationally renowned for films such as The Battle of Chile and Salvador Allende....

, Joaquim Jordà, and others.

The festival's goal is to promote freedom of speech

Freedom of speech

Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak freely without censorship. The term freedom of expression is sometimes used synonymously, but includes any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used...

 and the development of Ecuadorian documentary cinema

Documentary film

Documentary films constitute a broad category of nonfictional motion pictures intended to document some aspect of reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction or maintaining a historical record...

which plays a double role: a means of artistic expression and a testimony of the social, political and cultural reality we live in. The festival also encourages a deeper understanding of other realities and cultures that are presented through the work of documentary filmmakers from all over the world.

External links

• Official site
• YouTube channel of EDOC (contains the movie trailers)