Sheffield Doc/Fest 2014 line-up unveiled

Sheffield Doc/Fest (June 7-12) has unveiled this year’s line up and has secured the world premiere of A 50 Year Argument, the feature co-directed by Scorsese and David Tedeschi that charts how The New York Review of Books has reflected US culture since its launch in 1963.

The festival will include 21 world premieres, 12 European premieres, eight international premieres and 24 UK premieres.

As previously announced, music doc Pulp: A Film About Life Death and Supermarkets will open the festival on June 7.

There will be focuses on South Africa, art, sex, cycling and interactive.

World premieres will include Alex Holmes’ Stop At Nothing: The Lance Armstrong Story; The Last Man On The Moon, which tells the story of former astronaut Captain Eugene Cernan, who will attend the festival; One Rogue Reporter, written and directed by disillusioned tabloid journalist Rich Peppiatt; and Kim Longinotto’s Love Is All.

The latter examines the depiction of love and courtship in cinema over the past century and will be accompanied by a soundtrack written by Sheffield musician Richard Hawley at Chatsworth House.

Speakers will include artists Grayson Perry and Jeremy Deller, film-maker John Pilger, musician Brian Eno and Arts Council England chairman Peter Bazalgette.

This year’s Inspiration Award will be given to Laura Poitras, the US documentary film director and producer based in Berlin whose film My Country, My Country was nominated for an Oscar.

Poitras won the 2013 George Polk Award for “national security reporting” related to the NSA disclosures. The NSA reporting by Poitras, Glenn Greenwald, Ewen MacAskill, and Barton Gellman contributed to the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service awarded jointly to The Guardian and The Washington Post.

The festival will close on June 12 with Saint Etienne performing a live soundtrack to Paul Kelly’s film How We Used To Live, which cuts together footage of London from the 1950s to the ’80s.