When: July 26-28, 2006
Where: Keble College, Oxford, United Kingdom
What:  First annual festival.  British attempt at a must attend documentary film festival to allow for a meeting place of the British documentary community and introduction to the rest of the world.  In its first year 20 films will be screened.
Website: https://www.britdoc.org/festival/mission.php

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A new documentary film fund supporting documentaries that highlight
important contemporary social or political issues has been announced today
by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust at BRITDOC 06.

Up to £35,000 is being offered by the Reform Trust for documentary
projects that focus on issues of social justice, human rights and democracy
in Britain today.  This amount will be match funded by the Channel 4
British Documentary Film Foundation, taking the total potential amount
available to £70,000.  The aim is to encourage filmmakers to produce
documentaries that pressing issues to the forefront of audiences’ minds,
and to engage in stories which have the power to impact on political
agendas and social justice.

The fund was announced at the Would Like to Meet Campaigners event at
BRITDOC 06 – a unique networking session which brought together 20
filmmakers to speed-date 20 representatives from a variety of British
social and political campaigning groups, with the aim of stimulating ideas
for new documentary projects.

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THE WAR TAPES, the first war film to be shot by soldiers on the frontline,
has won a top documentary prize at BRITDOC 06 in association with Nokia –
the UK’s first international feature documentary festival.

The film, described by the jury as “a beautifully realised thoughtful and
intimate portrait of war”, shows life on the frontline of Iraq through
the eyes of American soldiers. It won the International competition
section at BRITDOC 06, which took place in Oxford from 26th-28th July.

37 USES OF A DEAD SHEEP, which explores the story of the Pamir Kirghiz
tribe of central Asia and their 27 years in exile having been forced out of
their homeland by Communist Russia and then by Maoist China, took the
British prize. It was described as “an outstanding achievement in
documentary filmmaking which reinvents the form of the ethnographic
documentary, dealing with the epic theme of modern migration with humour
and great insight.”