Documenta Madrid keeps it real with 60 premieres

Documenta Madrid '11 is awash with premieres. Among the 184 films to be screened at the eighth edition of the capital's documentary film festival, which begins today and runs until May 15, 60 are being screened in Spain for the first time.

Foremost among those is Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams, the German director's incredible 3D film about the world's earliest known cave paintings, found in the remote Chauvet Cave in southern France. The film screens on Friday and on Sunday in Cine Palafox at 10pm.

Other premieres include Dutch filmmaker Sonia Herman Dolz's All My Tomorrows, which takes a look at cancer; British director Ben Rivers' Slow Action, which considers how rising sea levels might affect the Earth in a few hundred years' time; and rock musician Lou Reed and photographer Ralph Gibson's Red Shirley, which pays tribute to Reed's 99-year-old cousin.

This year's festival also includes an homage to Italian filmmaker Vittorio de Seta, who can count Martin Scorsese among his fans and is famous for his portraits of the village life of his native Sicily. There are also retrospectives of Czech documentary maker Helena Trestikova, Germany's Volker Koepp and Hungary's Péter Forgács, who will offer a masterclass on May 12.

Organized by City Hall's cultural department and with the Princess of Asturias once again acting as patron, this year's festival features 60 films from 26 countries - whittled down from 1,105 applicants - competing in the official selection: 37 in the international competition (including 15 shorts) and 23 in the national competition (including 13 shorts).

And there are many more offerings alongside those in the Parallel Activities strands. Brazil: Film Frames of the 21st Century at Casa de América presents five films that boosted Brazilian documentary-making in the 1960s; Arab Stereotypes in Western Media at Casa Árabe features a selection of documentaries revealing the prejudices against Arabs portrayed in Western cinema; and Colonization, Cloning or Colonoscopy? comprises six premieres showing - with the topics of colonialism and decolonialism in the background - the current state of globalization and the loss of cultural identity around the world. Meanwhile, Climate. Culture. Change, running in conjunction with the Goethe-Institut, is a series of seven films examining climate change and suggesting a few possible ways out.

While headquarted in Matadero Madrid, the festival also plays out in several other venues around the city.