Frames of Representation documentary festival at the ICA

Art and politics film-makers have always been attracted to the documentary format – short (usually), concise, often powerful and focused, the genre is cinema’s bolshie sibling, as old as the feature film (the first documentaries were made just at the dawn of feature film production, at the end of the 19th century), yet always, just, in the shadow of the full-on commercial movie industry.

This is why festivals showcasing new documentaries and their makers are essential, fascinating motivators for their creators and audiences alike – simply, documentaries have to be produced on a micro-fraction of the budgets that even a lowly one-off TV drama can consume. The good side of this is that documentarists are largely free to focus on whatever they like, however they like – and that, after all, is true art.

Fantastic news then that Frames of Representation (FoR), a major but still fresh festival devoted to new documentaries from around the world, is back at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), on the Mall, a short stroll from Buckingham Palace.

This year’s festival brings together work and makers from an astonishingly wide range of cultural and social backgrounds – Argentina, Denmark, Venezuela, Poland, India and films from Brazil, France, Germany and Portugal. As well as screenings, there will be workshops and Q&A sessions.

Machines, a film by Rahul Jain, sheds light on work in India and has already claimed a cinematography award from the Sundance Festival. Mogadishu Soldier highlights the daily experience of a fighter in Somalia, and is a Norwegian-Danish film. Docile Bodies explores injustice in Argentina’s legal system, and You Have No Idea How Much I Love You allows you in to an intimate therapy session between an estranged mother and daughter, aimed at reconciliation. Gulistan: Land of Roses, a film from a Portuguese documentarist, exposes ordinary lives lived at the extreme – in this case, the highest permanent human settlement in the world, way, way up in the Peruvian Andes.

FoR has rapidly become one of the international documentary world’s most respected and anticipated festivals and meeting places. In the age of nations breaking ties with other nations, long may it thrive.