The Fate of Documentary Film

While there is debate about when, exactly, the first film
screening occurred, there is no arguing its genre. Whether the Lumiere
brothers’ 1895 “Exiting the Factory” or Louis Le Prince’s 1888 “Roundhay Garden Scene” or the Edison
workers’ undated camera test “Monkeyshines No. 1,” the earliest films were all
documentaries. Simply by pointing a camera at it, these moving pictures made
everyday life seem incredible.

But the expense of film stock and the enormous popularity of
the infant fictional film invariably led to the creation of movie stars and the
entrenched studio system, where every variable from setting to theater
projection could be easily controlled for maximum efficiency and a substantive
return on investment. Documentaries were relegated to wartime newsreels and
exotic travelogues.

The invention of videotape in 1956 nearly revived the
documentary with cheaper films and a more expendable stock. But viewers were
not too keen on the experimental films of the ’60s. In the end, it took the
creation of reality television programing to revitalize the genre. Using video
stock meant hours of footage could be taken at relatively low cost, and without
actors to pay, the programing quickly became a favorite. The widespread distribution
of reality TV made for a public primed to accept real life (or what passes as
real life) as incredible entertainment once more.

In fact, the meteoric rise of reality television almost
paralleled the increasing prominence of Michael Moore’s invasive brand of
nonfiction filmmaking. COPS first aired
in the spring of 1989, the same year as Moore’s Roger & Me, which proved to be the most successful documentary
in American history at the time of its theatrical run. Charlie Parsons dreamed
up Survivor in 1992, which came
to the U.S. in 2000, around the same time as the wildly popular Big
Brother. Moore released Bowling
for Columbine in 2002, which surpassed his
earlier film at the box office, brought down an Oscar and catapulted Moore onto
the international scene. However you feel about his films personally, Moore
undoubtedly paved the way for Exit Through The Gift Shop, March of the Penguins, Supersize Me and An Inconvenient Truth.

But most first-time filmmakers don’t enjoy the proud
reception Moore received from the American public. “At first it was [a
struggle] because I didn’t know anything about film distribution,” explains
Susan Polis Schutz, a favorite documantarian at PBS. “There aren’t many outlets
for non fiction documentaries.” Luckily for her, she fell into an excellent
relationship with KPBS, the San Diego PBS station, which has since distributed
all of her films. Between March and May of this year, her latest, Over 90
and Loving It, aired in almost every major
city nationwide. Cheap, professional-grade equipment enables Polis Schutz to
finance her own films from the profits of her previous endeavors.

Most directors are not so lucky. Traditionally, the festival
circuit is the funnel to theatrical distribution. But like a funnel, this
method enables only a fated few to make it to the marquees. The Internet offers
a direct pipeline to viewers without relying on the mercy of big time
distributors and movie houses. The complete democratization of technology,
coupled with the prevalence of YouTube and its analogues, provides filmmakers a
ready way to self-distribute their films.

“Obviously, the Internet will help,” Battle for Brooklyn director David Beilinson clarifies. “But the problem
is that the filmmakers don’t get paid. The main thing is to figure out how to
get filmmakers money so that they can continue to make films and still make
them available.” While fundraising though online platforms like Kickstarter can
make for a solid funding base, investors are wary of projects without a
guaranteed outcome. Like their studio forebears, capital wants a controlled
environment, including a bias towards material. Unlike Moore, most
documentarians set out to find the truth and then tell its story. It’s a gray
zone—one in which investors aren’t too comfortable. “But,” as Beilinson
believes, “in that gray zone is where great work gets made.”

The conundrum is clear: It is easier than ever to make a
good documentary film, but just as hard to reach an audience in a way that
makes a profit. How can a filmmaker
make it in this post-millennial environment?

Jonathan Sehring, president of Sundance Selects/IFC
Entertainment, doesn’t believe the Internet is the future. “The web isn’t
really a destination. The web is millions and millions of destinations. Even
something as successful as Netflix and their recommendation engine, it’s still
not easy to build an audience for a documentary.” Sehring strongly believes
that only sites of consumption that are a destination—theaters, television or
VOD—can offer indie filmmakers a taste of commercial success.

But as the head of a fairly big-time distribution house (in
fact, the Sundance Selects label was created because of Robert Redford’s
passion for documentary), Sehring might have a bit of a bias. For him, in order
to build an audience and “rise to the top,” a filmmaker must work “hand in hand
with a distributor.” But this relationship will not result in a huge marketing
campaign. Sehring admits that in a documentary, “we look for something that
will appeal to an audience that has a core following anyway.” In this ideal
scenario, “you can do a lot of grassroots marketing” for the film, rather than
spending the big bucks on promotional material to attract a new following.

Gideon Lichfield, curator of the Economist Film Project on
PBS, agrees. “You have to be good at everything,” he explains. “It’s no longer
just about the film itself, it’s about the whole process that goes into the
making of it, the funding of it, the distribution of it and the promotion of
it, because as a filmmaker you have to do all of those things probably to a
greater extent than you used to.” Filmmakers must market themselves to the
Economist Film Project in order to earn the funds to make a 6-8 minute cut for
television distribution. While the opportunity to be showcased on PBS is a rare
one, Lichfield’s strategy puts the onus on the filmmaker to cater his material
to the project in order to win distribution.

So where does one turn to not compromise content or
integrity? Nick Shimkin, co-founder of the three-year-old Kings County Cinema
Society, believes that Brooklyn’s burgeoning film culture may provide the
answer for local documentarians. The increasing number of microcinemas, film
collectives, DIY Theaters and festivals like UnionDocs, IndieScreen, Spectacle
Theater, Brooklyn Film Festival and BAMcinemaFest signify a growth in both
demand and production of local indie film. And it’s not just a rash of new
venues. Groups like the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective allow filmmakers to get
valuable peer feedback for work still in progress, before they ever try to
secure distribution. While Shimkin acknowledges that the Internet is the
future, he still believes in what he calls “the collective viewing experience.”
Something about a dark room and a rapt crowd makes a movie worthwhile. For this
reason, prior to monetizing a film via the Internet, Shimkin would “like to
think that there’s still a place for them in the theatrical setting.”

It all seems to come down to marketing. Unbidden, almost
every person I spoke to for this article brought up self-marketing as the
primary factor behind the success of a documentary film. It is only a blessed
few films that can make it through mainstream channels and specials like PBS’
POV Series or OWN Network’s new Film Club. Most must fight the masses on
hosting sites like SnagFilms or OpenIndie. For the first time, I’m seeing
self-distributed titles come across my desk. But this is by no means an easy
route to take.

Even if funding is secured, the film is well made and people
would be interested in seeing it, it may just come down to luck. JL Aronson,
the director of Last Summer at Coney Island,
had to approach distributors himself, finally signing IndiePix on board. For
Aronson, being an independent documentary filmmaker now means that “you also
have to be a marketer… so by the time your film shows up somewhere in the
bowels of iTunes, you really know who your audience is and how to alert them to
the fact that your film can be downloaded.” Andy Schupak, a partner in
streaming website Festival-of-Films, agrees. “In the old days, you probably had
a market to reach the distributor, but today you’re going directly to the end
user. So you have to figure out how to market to them.”

Reaching through the web directly to the viewer is an
extremely new concept, one that nobody has yet mastered. Popular YouTube users
craft their content around what will eventually “go viral,” but documentarians
have, for the most part, avoided the allure of the fame and easy funding that
comes along with compromised content. The democratization of technology means
that quite suddenly, truly amazing documentary films can be made for the price
of a used car. Hollywood’s exclusive ownership of filmmaking infrastructure is
crumbling. Like in the pivotal technological transitions that have come before,
the fate of documentary film will ultimately rest in the eyes of the viewers.
Unfortunately, right now many films are getting lost between production to
consumption. It is uncertain what the future of distribution—web and otherwise—will
bring for documentary filmmakers, but one thing is clear: documentary will
still survive.