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Assessing Success

Published on April 16, 2008

Katy Chevigny, Executive Director of Arts Engine.

Thoughts on Documentary's Current Heyday

Before declaring 2008 "The Year of the Documentary, " let's pause to catch our breath. After all, each of the last several years have been hailed as The Year of the Doc by film pundits, festival heads and bloggers galore. They first held a coronation in year 2004, due to the mainstream exposure gained by the record-breaking box-office hit Fahrenheit 9/11 and films like the super-buzzed-about Super Size Me. But other cultural critics have also called 2003, 2005 and 2006 the Year of the Doc. So as we head into a new year, perhaps it's time to label this the Decade of the Documentary and get it over with. The popular influence of docs doesn't seem to be waning anytime soon. However, some types of documentaries are basking in the glow of this twenty-first century zeitgeist more than others.

The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

This groundswell of acclaim for docs has been a mixed blessing for filmmakers. On the plus side are many changes for the better. Popular opinion of documentaries has radically shifted. No longer relegated to the obscurity of the classroom or the rare art-house run, documentaries have become proper entertainment, available in "big box" stores, playing at multiplexes and enjoying the praise and even some of the spotlight of the Hollywood establishment. In addition, cheaper camera equipment and non-linear editing systems have enabled many more aspiring filmmakers to enter the field. Finally, there are more venues for distributing documentaries. A wide variety of cable channels now show both standard television-formula documentaries as well as independently produced docs. Moreover, theatrical distribution has become more common and DVD and online video distribution give viewers ready access to formerly hard-to-find material.

The downside lies behind the scenes, in the start pragmatic realities of making and showing documentary films within this new paradigm. A major problem has always been the mismatch between the cost to produce professional documentaries (high) and the revenue available to pay for these costs (low). Front-end funds are hard-won, as charitable foundation dollars for documentaries are increasingly scarce and investors are few. Back-end revenue is declining as DVD profits are shrinking, broadcast fees are lowering, marketing costs are up and a theatrical release is more commonly a money-losing proposition than not. In part, these difficulties with film financing have gotten worse because the field is crowded like never before. Now that documentaries are cheaper and more popular, there's a lot more of them. You need to have a sense of humor to appreciate the nostalgia of some doc makers for the good old days, when there were fewer doc fans but also fewer filmmakers competing for those viewers.

Politics and Profit

Boiled down to its essence, this plus-and-minus analysis can be summed up as the price of success. The financial pressures created by the possibility of commercial success have caused two documentary subgenres to rise to the top of the heap, in terms of exposure: the entertainment documentary and the political documentary.

The first broad type of documentary we are seeing more of is the documentary that plays as a piece of entertainment first and foremost. These types of documentaries cover a wide range of topics and stylistic approaches. What they have in common is the distributor's perception of them having a high "entertainment" value, for any number of reasons. Entertainment docs often have one or more of the following: famous people, cute kids, the suspense of a contest, unusual or disturbing hobbies or sensational personal revelations. None of these are recipes for commercial success, but they are often seen as tools to such success. If you read Patricia Aufderheide's brand new book Documentary Film: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2007), you will learn that since the advent of the moving picture, the documentary genre has been shaped by the tension between art (or education) and commerce. In recent years, those who are in the "business" of making documentary film (i.e. the people who make money from docs), are seeking the doc that can vie with a Hollywood film in terms of drawing viewers. And doc makers have been responding. Hits like March of the Penguins, Murderball, and Spellbound have set the bar high for theatrical docs in terms of sheer entertainment. The success--perceived and actual--of this type of documentary has put pressure on independent documentaries to entertain broad audiences and to compete at the box office with mainstream movies. As a result, we see many docs striving to be the next in line with their kid-contest movie, or their dramatic story of real people participating in oddball or salacious activities.

The other subgenre of documentary that has gained ascendance is the so-called "political documentary." Without getting too fine in our definitions, the political doc ranges from the rabble-rousing films of Michael Moore to the sober advocacy work of An Inconvenient Truth, and from the community-galvanizing work of Brave New Films (Outfoxed, etc.) to any documentary that illustrates a pressing public policy concern (Participant Productions' Darfur Now being one of the latest to get wide release).

With the political documentary, there is a double bottom line to the success sought: to be commercially viable as well as politically hard-hitting or sensational. Part of this is the fall-out from the media juggernaut commonly known as An Inconvenient Truth. Al Gore's potent presentation on environmental apocalypse and the possibility for real change nailed the box office and influenced the public conversation far beyond the scope of the average political documentary. While documentarians may try to argue that this film's success is the exception that proves the rule, it has inevitably created a groundswell of filmmakers and investors seeking to produce the next An Inconvenient Truth.

What's to Become of the Not-So-Profitable Doc?

One unfortunate result of these new trends is that the smaller or artier documentary has become more difficult to get off the ground. Now that it seems less farfetched to imagine a wide release and significant revenue for a doc, the argument for a smaller portrait that doesn't meet any of the new criteria for success (i.e. politically hard-hitting, strong entertainment value, high famous-people quotient) is arguably harder to make. It's more difficult to raise the funds or to make the argument that an audience will want to see it. Films like the Maysles' Salesman (about a bunch of nobodies doing a tedious job) or Marlon Riggs' Black Is...Black Ain't (political, but not advancing a hard-hitting agenda) would have a more difficult time today justifying their existence, waving the flag of art over the subtle ideas they explore. Intimate without being sensational, these films are examples of the work of artists taking a humanist approach to their documentary subject matter. Concrete political advocacy in the form of "next steps" are mostly absent, and the storytelling style does not necessarily cleave religiously to a three-act narrative arc. This year's Hot Docs Film Festival in Toronto offered a retrospective of the Dutch filmmaker Heddy Honigmann, including her new film Forever, a meditation on death and mourning through the experiences of visitors to the Pere-Lachaise cemetery. It's a poem of a film, not topical, news-y or dramatic. Honigmann's nuanced touch, rooted in confident craftsmanship, reminded me of how unusual it is today to see docs from the U.S. that take the time to muse on the human condition. There are some, for sure, that rise to the top of the heap, but it is not the rule.

Perhaps American doc makers and their viewing public feel that in the current cultural and political climate, we don't have the luxury of pausing to wax existential. The demands made of the political film—that it should explicitly inform, educate and galvanize—are not surprising in the light of developments within journalism and the body politic. The decline of investigative television news reporting over the last two decades has created a void in the public affairs-related long-form documentary. With television news offering only minimal coverage of conflicts around the world, viewers increasingly turn to the intrepid documentarian to fill the gap. This is compounded by the fact that we are heading into our eighth year of the Bush Administration, marking also our seventh year at war. Those who are alarmed by White House policies and frustrated by the lack of accountability or transparency in those policies are eager to sink their teeth into an independent documentary that can offer the cathartic experience of presenting "the real deal." The success of last year's Sundance Film Festival Jury Winner No End In Sight is a perfect example of a growing anti-war public seeking films that speak to their pressing concerns. In a political climate when the public feels they have been let down by the Administration and traditional journalism, a film like No End In Sight is an absolutely vital contribution in creating a truer public dialogue. It is also very much a creature of its time.

In 2008 and beyond, we are likely to continue to see documentaries that serve a critical democratic function of truth-telling. This could mean that the side stories of life may not gain center stage any time soon. But it's worth remembering that no matter what film style is a la mode at a given time, there will always be artists who cannot be pigeonholed and whose best work goes against market trends. For those of us true believers in documentary as an art form capable of producing films that are profound, beautiful and long-lasting, we should continue to champion those films that are mostly left behind in the marketplace. To the best of our ability, we should strive to keep a spot carved out on the documentary landscape for the humanist doc, the poetic doc, the so-called "smaller" film. Hopefully, artists will continue using the relatively inexpensive tools available to them to work in the voice of their choosing, and festivals and online distribution will offer a sanctuary for their work to flourish. Because in order for the documentary to remain an exciting form in the next decade and beyond, filmmakers need the space to take the artistic risks that will bring us films that truly push the envelope and blow our minds.

This article was originally published in the January/February 2008 issue of Film Arts magazine.