The Circuit

Sifting through the BritDoc coverage, which concluded over the weekend...

Matt Dentler watched "Borat" director Larry Charles (pictured) talk about moving from TV to docs:

 "I think doing Seinfeld, as great as it was and as much fun as it was, the artifice of a sitcom started feeling too contrived," he told the audience at BRITDOC. "I got very tired of that. I started seeking out things that would help me find a deeper truth."

Director AJ Schnack thinks the pitch-panel phenom may be turning a corner:

This year, BritDoc added "The Good Pitch" which may just be the beginning of pulling the pitching forum into the future.  Instead of loading up a table with the same group of commissioners, there were representatives from granting agencies, production companies, film funds, corporations, websites, magazines and more.  It was a fresh take on the whole pitching forum and one that viewers in the packed and overheated theater seemed to give good grades (even if it did have the whole social justice thing branded right across its arse).

Jason Solomons put up a podcast from a BritDoc walkabout:

On this week's Film Weekly podcast, I wander around, doc-style, talking to organisers and pitchers and celebs - I've got Larry Charles, Nick Broomfield and Marc and Nick Francis, the directors of Black Gold, the award winner which changed the way you drink your coffee.

BritDoc has announced the projects up for their first Big Pitch forum, where doc filmmakers pitch for over 1 million Euros to an international panel that includes HBO Doc's Nancy Abraham, Sundance Doc Program's Cara Mertes, Participant's Courtney Sexton, and BBC's Greg Sanderson.

Standouts look to be Tom Eldridge's "Let Me Walk Again," about a Delhi-based doctor who uses stem cell  treatments for incurable conditions, and Mark Henderson's "My Kidnapper and Me," where the director returns to Columbia to face his kidnappers, who reached out to him through Facebook.

Full list here.