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Patricia Finnerman 2007
- Details
- Parent Category: Film and the Arts
- Category: Interviews
- Published on Sunday, 17 January 2010 12:30
- Written by Super User
Interview with Patricia Finneran, Festival Director, 2007
SILVERDOCS: AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival
Maryland’s Silver Spring sprang to life June 12-17as Silverdocs AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival unspooled 100 films from 42 countries--and even tacked on an extra day. According to festival director Patricia Finneran, “We got 1,735 submissions and if there were any more I stopped counting.” Laura Blum sat down with Patricia to get the skinny on the growing fest.
Q: So you’re five years old.PF: Yup.Q: Where in the family of festivals is Silverdocs?PF: I feel like now, in our fifth year, that Silverdocs really has become a part of the family of national festivals and definitely a part of the international documentary festival circuit. For example, IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam) is the largest documentary festival. Our colleagues and friends at IDFA hosted the Doc Agora debate on the future of documentary this year and then it went on to Sheffield and then Hot Docs in Toronto and now Silverdocs. So what’s nice is some of my colleagues from each of those places as well as the Doc Agora team have been at each of those places and now at Silverdocs.Q: So is that being cöoptive or collaborative?PF: It’s really collaborative. We each continued the conversation in a different place…we have someone from each of those festivals. Silverdocs has become the key stop in the United States on the international documentary circuit. There’s obviously competition among film festivals for premieres and for films, but luckily in the documentary community, at least at an international level, the competition isn’t so bad. We’re also friends with our colleagues in the United States. Matt Dentler from SXSW is on our jury. We’re collegial although we’re all competing for premieres.Q: How important are premieres?PF: I would say premieres are important. For the filmmaker where you choose to premiere your film is important. For us having North American or American premieres is important for press. It’s great to have world premieres, but that isn’t that important because the American press can live with the fact that it’s been in Amsterdam already. I think the premiere status is important for the industry coming to the festival to feel that there’s new work to look at.
One of the ways we address that issue is to create the International Documentary Conference. We said, “How are we going to serve the community in a way that nobody else is currently serving it?” So we created within the festival a six-day conference--we have 77 panels and 100 panelists. We’re looking at the future of distribution; we’re looking at financing; we’re looking at inside public television, inside Discovery; we’re having tea with National Geographic; we'll hear from Mark Urman about marketing documentaries and also talk about the real craft issues about making films.
So our strategy was to say, “Let’s serve the documentary community in another way and build the foundation of the festival up such that the industry will come.” We invest in the industry: we comp them; we fly some of them in; we do what we can within our budget.Q: Is that a market by other means?PF: I think that it is. I used to run the IFP market, so we looked at this and didn’t want to create a market. There’s a pitching forum at Hot Docs and and that’s a model that’s great. But it may not be a new model because it’s a geographic model. The films are funded by geographic pockets with broadcasters from the individual nations. In this new realm of distribution it’s about theatrical, it’s about TV, but it’s also about internet and self-promotion.
What will these new models be, and will these models be broken down by Joost, for example? So we’re not going to do the pitch forum. What we are doing is a couple of other things. There’s the panels, there’s these things called Silver Sessions, where filmmakers meet with an individual…for example, Clark Bunting, president of Discovery Studios, did a panel on staying in business and working with independent producers.Q: But there were some pitch sessions, no?PF: There were some pitch sessions, right. For students…It works when you have commissioning execs who are willing to put money into funding projects and not just a, “Sure, we’re buying it," and they don’t really. So we’re looking at those models. I think it’s a real transitional moment for the industry in terms of how films are getting funded, and we’re trying to be on the forefront of this.Q: On that note, what did you think of (AOL vice chairman and documentary producer) Ted Leonsis’s keynote?PF: Ted Leonsis was brilliant. He’s such a savvy businessman. He brings this model about running a sports team or running a company to the film industry. He’s kind of stunned by the numbers and by the fact that filmmakers basically don’t make a living at what they do. I think that with the theatrical numbers he was right: filmmakers are not making their money in theatrical.
They are making a living, though. They’re selling their films to television. The model is still functioning. It may be breaking down, but the essential model is theatrical, if you can get it, television and then DVD and home video. That model’s still there—it’s not broken by any means. There are just new alternatives and big issues around rights and clearances. I think he brings up some really great ideas. We’re not there yet.
I think these other sources of funding, such as philanthropic funding by NGOs and nonprofit advocacy groups funding films in a far more robust way than we’ve seen in the past is an important trend, one that we need to be careful to look at, which is why we’re doing a whole summit on it. Because on the one hand it’s a great opportunity for filmmakers to have a new alternative for funding. On the other hand, a filmmaker’s artistic independence is really important--to make the film that they sought out to make.Q: It’s really branded entertainment with the product being an idea or a cause. PF: Exactly. Which is great. And it’s great to change the world with film and that’s a wonderful ideal. But for me it’s important that every story have a point of view and a perspective, and that perspective or point of view should be clear. There should be integrity in terms of how they approach their stories so that the audience gets a balanced perspective, knowing that the filmmaker had a perspective. They’re artists and they’re creating. So there’s this interesting balance that needs to happen in terms of the storytelling and a transparency about where the funding came from.Q: Did you just describe the Silverdocs programming philosophy?PF: I think so. It’s about quality storytelling, stories that touch you emotionally, stories that surprise you. But this idea of authenticity and integrity in approach is really important at the core level. And that’s important for bringing our whole industry up.Because I’ve heard, “Well, documentary is the voice of the liberal, ” and it makes me laugh. What does that mean? You look at the vast body of work and see these filmmakers who take their work so seriously and have such respect for their subjects because they’re spending two, three years of their lives with their subject. So they don’t walk in like a news crew and spray it around and say, “Bye bye, we got it!” and do whatever they want with it. Because they have to have a relationship of trust with their subject. It’s very different. That’s the gift that filmmakers give us, that investment of time in a subject. That’s something you don’t get on the evening news story. And that’s the magic of documentary.Q: (Coma director) Liz Garbus said that Silverdocs was a platform that takes a story and extends it.PF: Because we’re in Washington, D.C., it seemed like an obvious thing to do to bring in some experts from NIH and health care experts and brain injury experts regarding Liz Garbus’s film. Coma deals with brain injury and recovery, and it’s an investment of time. So we worked with Liz and with HBO to put together a discussion afterwards that really went in depth into the issue.
On The Devil Came on Horseback with Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern, the filmmakers, we put together a panel that was pretty stunning. We had the former Ambassador to South Africa, a leading person who is working on the ground in Darfur and dealing with issues in Sudan, a State Department (official)…and a leader in investment in Sudan. We said, “People want to hear about these issues and our audiences have an opportunity to really learn more…and hopefully add to it.”Q: Advertisers would kill to have that kind of engagement with the buying public. Talk about festivals as a showcase for commercial engagement--as a business.PF: It can be what one would call a slippery slope of working with advocacy groups and other organizations. Because ultimately our core mission is to honor filmmakers and to show films. The issues that they’re exploring are the issues that we then extend. But we’re not in the business of advocacy. We’re not in the business of promoting particular causes. But we provide an environment and a venue for likeminded individuals who want to get engaged in their communities, engaged in issues and to come together around the films.
So by providing experts in the field and by inviting journalists, we expand on the issues explored in the film but we try very hard to not take a policy stand. We’re about showing the movies. One area where we do take a stand is the environment. We said, “You know what, it’s important to protect our planet, so let’s be responsible: let’s use recycled materials; let’s print on recycled paper; and let’s make choices in terms of being a business since we are a business.”Q: What role do festivals play in the film selling cycle?PF: The larger festivals are used as a film launchpad--Sundance, maybe New York Film Festival, maybe AFI Fest, maybe Tribeca. Then you get into SXSW. Seattle. Silverdocs. IDFA. Sheffield. It keeps going after you get through the top three. Then there are film festivals that serve a couple of different communities. For instance, there’s a film like The Devil Came on Horseback, which other festivals had shown. We said, “This is a really important topic and it doesn’t need to be a premiere.”
Then there are films like Living Goddess, a tiny little obscure film about this goddess from Nepal. Is there a big constituency of people who care about a goddess from Nepal? No, there isn’t. So they need a film festival to generate this energy, give it press attention. Living Goddess was featured on ABC World News Tonight! That wouldn’t have happened unless we’d put this film in the festival. If the filmmaker had four-walled it at the Film Forum or elsewhere, would she have gotten that kind of attention? No.Q: So here it’s about exposing the smaller gems.PF: So we serve those mid-level films and the community of festivals serves them over time to create word-of-mouth, to create community experience, to create what people are calling constituent relationship marketing: reach out to a community who reaches out further.Q: Is there a caveat?PF: The tricky thing for festival programmers and directors right now is when you’re dealing with a film that’s going to have a theatrical release, the negotiation of how much press it gets before the theatrical release. So you work it out on a case-by-case basis.Q: Who is your key customer base?PF: That’s another tricky thing--we have so many different constituencies. You have the constituency of your core community and the filmmakers in the industry. Did they have a good experience? Is their film promoted? Some of them want their film promoted while some of them don’t. Some are opening theatrically, so there are different things: I want a bigger theater, I want a smaller theater! So it’s dealing with the needs of the filmmakers and the distributors associated with them. And the press.
But ultimately you’re an event for this community, and for us that means the Silver Spring and Washington, D.C. region. We need to create an environment where they come together. We’re very privileged to live in a community that’s the most highly educated in the United States. There are more PhD’s here than anywhere else. So the audiences are really engaged and excited about being here, but they also have high expectations.
They’re busy people. They want a place to park. It’s not about the ten dollars; it’s about, “Is there a place to park and eat? Can I get my ticket easily? I’m not interested in waiting 2½ hours in line.” So what’s the customer service experience? At the end of the day the filmmakers and us, we’re all finding it’s a little about money, but the biggest thing is, it’s about time.Q: That’s the precious commodity.PF: It’s the precious commodity. People can get a film for a 99 cent download, not huge amounts of money at play here, but people have very little leisure time. So how do you create an event that offers something different they can’t get anywhere else…and that makes it easy for them and that they can enjoy and relax over a glass of wine afterwards and have a nosh with the filmmakers?Q: What’s your demographic?PF: It’s pretty diverse. It’s not all one color and one socioeconomic status. We have a PR and marketing team that do outreach for each and every film. And the filmmakers do too. Made in L.A. is about sweat shops and organizing labor in manufacturing in Los Angeles. So it’s a lot about immigrant labor. We’ve done a lot of outreach to that community here to get them to come to the AFI Theater.
It’s a year-round theater, so there is sort of a core audience around independent film, a high-end film audience. But interestingly, what Silverdocs does is break through some of those barriers because of the specific films and specific subjects. Once people come here they say, “Hey, that was a pretty good experience…so I’ll come back.”Q: Is there an age group associated with Silverdocs?PF: I don’t think so.Q: You don’t think it’s an older crowd?PF: The majority might be older, but this year, for example, we have a lot of youth-oriented films. And we’ve made a real conscious effort to reach out to young people. So we see a lot of families. Which is great, because ultimately young audiences are just huge for us.
The other trick audience that you don’t think about is your volunteers. There’s about 300 volunteers. But they’re mixed. You tend to get a group of older people and it’s fantastic—you get a lot of retired people who come in and help you. But a lot of the volunteers are pretty young. So they’re working half a day and then they go see movies. They come back the next year and you realize in a way they’re actually your core audience.Q: Create customer loyalty young, like the credit cards.PF: Exactly. Again, it’s not about the money—it’s about the experience. You make these connections and relationships that you really can’t do anywhere else and you carry them over to the next year.Q: What allows a film to be categorized in World View programming bloc as opposed to the Sterling Awards bloc?PF: It’s a very subjective and challenging process to determine exactly. We have standards that we set forth and then the work comes in. So we determined that there would be a Sterling Award competition among ten. They tend to be films that have played at fewer festivals, maybe at one or two, but it’s focusing on films that are new to the marketplace, sometimes from emerging filmmakers.
For example, we’d be unlikely to put Al Maysles’s film, The Gates, in our competition. Does Al Maysles need our competition? Nope. But we’re really happy to play it in the festival. So it’s about recognizing and awarding new work and putting together a program that’s balanced. You can’t reasonably ask for the entire festival to be in competition. You can’t ask the jury to see 65 feature films.
So you create some other competitive sections and other awards to honor films. So we have a Cinematic Vision Award this year that’s honoring the visual approach of storytelling. It’s sponsored by the Discovery HD Theater people. We have a music documentary bloc, back from previous years. It’s so surprising — a film about making a piano. It’s not Stop Making Sense or Neil Young & Crazy Horse. So there are all sorts of ways that music touches our lives.Q: Faith is another biggie. Talk about the programming criteria for films about faith.PF: Beyond Belief came up because last year we did a panel called “Envisioning Faith”…You had a film about a cult, about Christianity and about issues in Islam. We said, “God—I mean Gosh!--there’s a lot of work dealing with issues of faith.” We originally began doing something about politics and faith, but this is where a film festival is about a dialogue with the filmmakers.Q: What comes in.PF: What comes in, what rises to the top, what suprises us. Audience of One, for example, is about a pastor who gets a vision to make a multimillion dollar, sort of timeless sci fi feature about the life of Joseph. So it’s the vision of the filmmaker and the passion of the Pentacostal preacher who has his flock around to make his film with him. So for anybody who’s ever tried to make a movie, you have to see this movie, yet it’s also about faith.
What surprised us is that the films in the Beyond Belief section had to do with personal passions and had to do with an individual character. Those were the movies that really were strong. They deal with issues of faith in society–fanaticism and spirituality and ethics—but in a way that was really surprising. How To Cook Your Life, sort of a Zen Buddhist approach to cooking and to life--I wouldn’t have thought of that…You haven’t seen (a film like this). …Mostly they’re about personal journeys.Q: Looking ahead to the next five years, what’s the goal for Silverdocs?PF: When you grow you realize you have growing pains. This year the growing pains are about sold-out shows…Next year we’re going to have to figure out how to accommodate more customers. In terms of expanding the filmmakers’ work, panel discussions and special Q&A’s, we want to keep doing that.
It’s about having fun and dealing with serious issues, keeping that balance and doing both things. With the conference, it’s about addressing what’s happening in the field and looking at the issues that are affecting funding, distribution, marketing, reach and engagement. So these are big priorities for the future.