TV killed the documentary star?
In October 2009 a unique event took place, the doc news industry missed it since it was another opening speech for yet another documentary film festival. But we believe that the speech carried out at Film DOK Leipzig must find its way to filmmakers everywhere. So better late than never. Claas Danielsen Chairman of DOK Leipzig, reviewed the current state of documentary filmmaking in Germany. Every documentary filmmaker all around the world, knows the situation, funds are limited and the prospects of selling your movie are glim. But there was an added value, Class examined the documentary film dedcading process and how TV is killing the artistic form and value of documentary films.
“While artistic authors’ documentaries are frequently successful in the cinema, I have been observing a marginalisation of the genre in television for years. I see more and more clearly that this is the result of a dangerous attitude of television programmers towards their audience. They often regard them as slightly retarded people of dim perceptions and ultimately as children rather than responsible citizens. Complex, unusual and challenging subjects and narrative styles are way beyond their intellectual capacity - or so it is said.
Thus we see the voice-over in format television documentaries start after the first 30 seconds and continue ceaselessly to minute 43, or minute 52 in international productions, interrupted only by interviews. Everything must be simple and easy to grasp. Programmes are thoroughly formatted in the pursuit of calculable ratings and a secure “audience flow”. Well entrenched broadcasting recipes have frozen the medium. The editors hiding behind these format facades become unassailable but unable to impose their own style. They have ceased to reveal themselves to the world.
Instead of exploring the unknown with curiosity or challenging prejudices, subjects setbeyond the regional or national broadcast area are almost completely neglected. Try offering an editor a film set in Africa that is not about wild animals...
In this situation, the documentary film, let alone something as uncontrollable, fantastically wild and sometimes anarchic as the animated short film, is no longer appreciated in the programmers’ offices, nor adequately financed by the commissioning editors, nor given suitable slots in the programme. But documentary film, at least today, cannot exist without television. And television sinks into intellectual and aesthetic poverty, losing broad parts of the audience and becoming more and more irrelevant.
I appeal to the colleagues in the public broadcasting houses financed by all of us: turn around and resist.
Read the full speech here.
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