D-Word Insight
Last week, D-Word, an online community for documentary discussions, hosted a forum that discussed the rise and function of political documentaries. Doug Black moderated it and Pamela Yates (Witness to War, Presumed Guilty) and Jehane Noujaim (Startup.com and Control Room) led the discussion. There were so many interesting points covered and questions raised—and was a great resource to documentary filmmakers. Although the forum has ended, you can still log on and read it.
One of the points raised by Pamela was about distribution.
"Even if you have a diligent distributor, you need to work alongside them for a very long time building and activating the audience….It helps enormously if you have a movement to relate to…"
And Deadline definitely has a movement to work with! There are hundreds of active groups in the States working towards re-examining the criminal justice system. Big Mouth Productions knew that after Deadline's completion, much work would still be needed in order to get people to fill the theatres/screening rooms, and then, most importantly, to act upon what they've seen. Deadline's outreach initiative includes a year of screenings/panel discussions in target states which are working towards moratorium referenda or repeal movements. They also paired up with Active Voice and created a full discussion guide to be used alongside these screenings.
More and more documentaries come with informative websites, which include blogs such as this one, where people can get more information about what to do after they’ve seen the doc.
Pamela also gave her definition of political films:
"I'm talking about films that are engaged with the politics or polices of a government or institution or groups in society. The films are often critical, always questioning, sometimes explaining, often bringing a hidden reality to the fore."
As Pamela mentioned, the influence of these documentaries can be big and small. She listed three docs that had a major effect on the stories it covered: "The Murder of Emmitt Till," "The Thin Blue Line" and her own film, "When the Mountains Tremble". There are countless others and Deadline is sure to be one of them. Over five million people watched Deadline on Dateline this summer. Hundreds of people posted their reactions to the film on this blog. This past weekend the director met a Republican in South Dakota who told her, "the film was really upsetting and real good, and now I'm curious and ready to rethink."
These were just two points that I pulled from the weeklong dialogue. I encourage you to check it out.
Thanks D-Word!
Posted by katherine at 03:25 PM
Comments
Posted by: zzz at November 7, 2006 09:51 AM
