'How Is Your Fish Today?'

With documentaries taking an ever larger place in moving image culture, the advent of a new festival is something to applaud, and the inaugural Britdoc fest on July 26-28 stepped up to the plate with aplomb.

Backed by the Channel 4 British Documentary Film Foundation and sponsored by the AP archive and Nokia, it was an industry-geared event designed to bring together British filmmakers and international funders and distributors – the subtext being the uncertain future of traditional backing from the major UK broadcasters.

Housed amid the Gothic Revival splendours of Keble College, Oxford, the fest had a decidedly civilised feel, with croquet on the quad, pitching summits in the august rotunda of the city's Sheldonian Theatre and screenings in the Pitt Rivers Museum of natural history – considerable resolve was required to take your seat when it meant walking past a full-size T Rex skeleton!

The fest also took advantage of the academic setting by organising a 'speed dating' session between filmmakers and scientists in the hope of incubating new subjects. (The punk rock karaoke night was perhaps less classically Oxonian.)

The pitching forum was a 'Dragon's Den'-type affair, with a dozen commissioners from various broadcasters and charitable foundations (which account for a growing proportion of funding opportunities) deciding which of 14 proposals to give a £1,000 award to. Pitches on female Vietnam War reporters, a rehab centre for underage sex offenders and an opera inspired by contemporary warzones went down well, but the prize went towards the second feature by corporate pranksters the Yes Men.

There was also an impressive line-up of panels and masterclasses: Ken Loach's editor Jonathan Morris offered insights into 'trying to tell a story without words' and learned how the quality of the HDTV image affects the rhythm of its editing (shots are held longer to allow viewers to soak up the detail). Meanwhile a discussion of the use of archive material raised interesting points about how categorising American current affairs programmes as entertainment has considerable implications for filmmakers wanting to use contemporary news footage.

It also traced the massive new popularity of colour material from the early twentieth century, including screening a newly discovered clip from a 1912 Indian film of George V's coronation in Delhi. The panel on new distribution modes drew a packed house: all acknowledged that massive change was afoot though opinion differed as to whether the likes of YouTube and MySpace were really the best way forward for filmmakers.

A strong selection of new British and international features and shorts was also on show. In the domestic competition, there was much to enjoy in the (now unexpectedly topical) '638 Ways to Kill Castro', a rundown of four decades of assassination attempts that offered some fantastic archive material. London-based Chinese director Xiaolu Guo presented 'How Is Your Fish Today?', a tricksy and intriguing semi-fictional account of a Beijing scriptwriter's journey across the length of the country.

The prize went to Ben Hopkins' playful anthropological study of the Pamir Kirghiz, '37 Uses for a Dead Sheep', in which members of the central Asian tribe reenact episodes of their history even as their future as a cohesive ethnic group seems highly jeopardised. Affectionate and engaged, the film also avoids bemoaning the fact of change.

In the international competition, most attention probably went to a pair of highly accomplished films that left some with a slightly questionable aftertaste: Eric Steel's deeply moving and disturbing 'The Bridge' is about some of the dozens of people who jump from the Golden Gate Bridge each year, and includes footage not only of conversations with their friends and families but of the deaths themselves (Steel and his team filmed at the bridge for a year). Like most of the directors, Steel was present and offered a vigorous and largely persuasive rebuttal to suggestions of exploitation.

Category prize-winner 'The War Tapes', meanwhile, offered a view of the war in Iraq as shot by three New Hampshire National Guardsmen in conjunction with director Deborah Scranton back in the US. A powerful record of these men’s experiences, it's also unabashed in its support for them and arguably, by extension, the project in which they are tied up. Such provocative films offered striking proof of the power of documentaries to prompt reflection and debate – further confirmation of the festival's success.

For more info see www.britdoc.org.