FEATURE


fund films that are less likely to work at the box office in a traditional way. That puts the pressure on creat- ing smart social-media campaigns where an issue film can tap into a pre-sold audience but not strictly through throwing money at traditional advertising dollars. That, of course, often ends up in the lap of the film-maker who is forced to become a social mar- keter and an adjunct to a theatrical distributor’s grassroots efforts. But it can pay off and may be the only way for certain films to find a wider audience.” Since documentary film-makers tend to be so


invested in their projects anyway, the majority need little prompting to reach out to their potential con- stituencies. Such commitment, together with access to social-media tools, helped persuade IFC Entertainment and its various distribution labels in the US to venture back into acquiring documen- taries. Among its recent pick-ups is Room 237, the highly subjective Directors’ Fortnight documen- tary that explores the suggested hidden meanings of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. “We shied away from documentaries for a while


because they seemed so labour-intensive,” admits Jonathan Sehring, president of IFC Entertainment and Sundance Selects. “But the film-makers know their audiences so well that we found we could work very closely with them and achieve great results.” In the case of both Buck and Cave Of Forgotten


Dreams, Sehring, who pioneered the theatrical/ VoD day-and-date distribution model in 2006, was even persuaded to revert to a theatrical-first release pattern that was only followed by an on-demand cable offering towards the tail-end of their theatri- cal runs. This was partly dictated by necessity: much of the core audience for Buck, about ‘horse whisperer’ Buck Brannaman, were located near movie theatres that could not play day-and-date with VoD. Across Montana, Wyoming and Texas, the cowboy-themed film played in venues that had never shown a documentary before, en route to a $4m domestic gross.


Grey area The looming question now is whether the future generation of ticket buyers, the one which has grown up on YouTube, will remain as enamoured with theatrical documentaries as the present one. It is with the greying US cinema-goer in mind, rather than his offspring, that Jeff Lipsky, the indie vet- eran who co-founded October Films with the late


Bingham Ray, has been tempted back into the dis- tribution arena. His first release is the experimental gender-transformation documentary The Ballad Of Genesis And Lady Jaye. It will be followed by, among others, the Taviani brothers’ semi-documentary winner of Berlin’s Golden Bear, Caesar Must Die. “We have been working with Jeff ’s Adopt Films,


which has been specifically targeting the genera- tion of baby boomers because he believes they have more time to go to the theatre as they are older,” says Martin Marquet, a producer on Ballad. “With something as niche as this, I wouldn’t necessarily have ventured a traditional theatrical release, par- ticularly given all the online platforms out there for those kinds of films. But given the raves from our festival tour, it made sense.” The age factor, in a positive way, may also come


into play for another documentary screening here in official selection. Fatih Akin’s Polluting Paradise is a lament to a Turkish village on the Black Sea that was effectively sacrificed when the government chose it as the location for a huge rubbish dump. What


began as a personal crusade by Akin to use his celeb- rity clout in Turkey to save his grandfather’s village by prodding politicians into reversing the landfill decision, has evolved over the years into an ode to the village heroes struggling to cling on after those efforts failed. Akin took himself out of the film com- pletely and let three-quarters of it be captured by the village photographer who was given a crash course by the German film-maker in shooting video. The film will be released in Germany by Akin’s


regular partner Pandora, looking to build on the local fascination for non-fiction films that has grown over the last decade, rather than trade on the film-maker’s credentials. Akin says it makes more sense to market it as a documentary than as a Fatih Akin film. “I don’t know how big this audience will be but…


because it is about a village which young people are abandoning, leaving the older generation behind, that an older audience will identify with it far more,” he explains. “We have a lot of old people here in Germany, so there is definitely an audience.” n


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Polluting Paradise is Fatih Akin’s lament for a Turkish village


‘Interest in documentaries, and especially hybrid documentaries, is growing


rapidly’ Tine Fischer, CPH:DOX


Dreams Of A Life


The Ballad Of Genesis And Lady Jaye » May 22, 2012 Screen International at Cannes 25 n


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