Documentaries: Diversity stays in the picture
What is the state of documentaries today? Industry professionals are noting a decline in diversity initiatives, a reconfiguration of North/South relations, and an online distribution system that has run out of steam.
The top concern for documentary professionals at the recent Montreal International Documentary Festival (RIDM 2024) was how support for diversity in the U.S. working world has fallen.
“One of our New York partners was actually told not to use the word impact anymore because it makes a project sound too wokey,” recounted Leonard Cortana during a talk dubbed Toward a Fairer, More Inclusive Industry at the November 2024 event. Cortana is the manager of inclusion programs and strategic partnerships for EURODOC. “It’s nothing new that groups are no longer using the terms like BIPOC [Black, Indigenous, People of Colour] or ‘Black filmmaker,’ because funders won’t invest in any proposal containing those words.”
Of course, there have been conservative shifts like this in the past, from the McCarthy era to Reagan. Cortana sees today’s shift as a battle that must be fought with education.
“It’s very important to reinvigorate these words to meet this movement — one that could easily turn very violent in the years to come — head on,” Cortana said. He singled out the work of Marion Schmidt (DocSafe) and Jane Mote in their “Safer Spaces” report presented at Durban FilmMart 2024, an initiative for developing the African film industry.
While the threat to diversity may seem less immediate from a Canadian perspective, there is still a long way to go before we see full inclusion in documentaries produced here, including our idea of how stories can be structured.
During a talk dubbed Reinventing Co-Production Between Francophone Regions, Eric Idriss-Kanago, a producer with Montreal-based production company Yzanakio, pointed out that funding bodies still have a bias toward stories told in three acts with one main character at the centre of the story.
“When we talk about the narrative or the identity of storytelling, we must also remember that there are countries that have other ways of telling their stories. In Central Africa, the stories I hear grandfathers telling don’t have three acts,” Idriss-Kanago said.
“My dream is that the day will come when projects get funding precisely because they move away from the Manichean [good vs. evil], three-act structure and have stories with characters that evolve through a series of stages. If you’re talking about inclusion, you need to include other ways of telling stories as well.”
Putting North/South exchanges on an equal footing
Diversity was also a hot topic during a discussion of North/South co-productions, which have historically grappled with an unbalanced dynamic. Because wealthier, more industrialized northern nations throughout the world have been privileged in terms of funding bodies, they’ve had more sway in imposing their way on how a film should be produced, including narrative norms like the three-act structure, than developing countries in the world’s South.
On the other hand, Senegalese producer Souleymane Kébé (Sunuy Films) offered a refreshing view of these relationships. “We’re really fortunate. Our FOPICA [Fonds de Promotion de l’Industrie Cinématographique et Audiovisuelle] funding organization provides financial support for the production of feature films in Senegal,” he said. “This gives me the confidence to look my co-production friends in the eye and have a serious conversation.”
Since completing the Africadoc Training Program in Saint-Louis, Senegal, a decade ago, Kébé has been active in arranging 50/50 partnerships with producers in northern countries. He’s also encouraged other African producers to take advantage of co-production agreements with Algeria, Morocco, Ivory Coast and Burkina Faso.
“If I can set up a co-production with a partner from Ivory Coast, for example, we can then go together and knock on the door of European funding organizations,” said Kébé. “It can shift the balance of power to our advantage.”
Cortana also mentioned a positive development in North/South relationships.
“There’s a major movement in returning film archives from the North to the South,” he said. “Governments, including the Netherlands, are now doing this. There are also African coalitions working on this and requesting that archives be returned.”
The collapse of online viewing
Challenges regarding financing and streaming platforms have been discussed at these events for years and are still a big concern.
There is no longer hope that online platforms will save the documentary industry. The pandemic is over, and the limitations of the online model simply can’t be overcome.
“When I started working as a producer I thought the internet was the most democratic platform out there,” said Wouter Jansen, owner of the Square Eyes distribution company, during a talk titled Breaking Into the International Market. “All we had to do was upload our films and everyone would get to see them. I uploaded a film to Vimeo and in two years only one single person bought a copy.”
Cortana agrees the pandemic fuelled false expectations that streaming platforms would be a panacea. “The hope was that there would be an audience for documentary films online, but that was immediately dashed after the pandemic,” he said. Today he has little faith in all but a few specialized platforms such as Doc Alliance, True Story and Criterion.
“While they pay a pretty penny, their real value is only in making films available,” explained Cortana. “It’s also a question of extending the shelf life of films by keeping them in the public eye.”
María Vera, founder of the Lisbon-based Kino Rebelde distribution company, feels the same. “As far as I’m concerned platforms are not a place where you can do business. They’re more about just showing films,” she said.
She’s also frustrated with broken promises made amid the explosion of platforms. “You’ll sometimes hear a small platform brag about its global reach. My reaction is, how can it possibly reach an audience in China? It’s not even indexed on Google.”
Vera emphasized the importance of working with distributors who know how to reach their audience. ‘‘We should be paying closer attention to platforms that have local clout,” she said, citing the European platform True Story and its well-established position in the UK.
For Vera, the platform of choice will always be festivals.
