2016 La Scam Day La Scam Day
We invite the public to a very particular journey through documentary creation via the five films selected from among the fifty completed over the past year, winners of support from the “Brouillon d’un rêve” seed fund, La Scam’s mechanism aiding film creation.
It is a journey to the heart and mission of “Brouillon d’un rêve”: questioning with the filmmakers, be they beginners or experienced, what is creating a documentary, beyond the oversimplified cleavage between “auteur” cinema and the “general public”, confronting the question of cultural models and of breaking their boundaries. That is what we defend and what is at stake as the year slides by: a persistent invitation made to filmmakers to take advantage of their liberty to create outside all formal constraints, all standardisation of thought.
This year, thanks to the commitment of Yaël André, Jacques Deschamps, Anna-Celia Kendall, Dominique Loreau in the jury and of Dominique Cabrera, Alice Diop, Esther Hoffenberg, Stéphane Manchematin, Bernard Mangiante, Frédérique Pressmann, Axel Salvatori-Sinz, Régis Sauder, Juliette Senik and Cécile Vargaftig in the reading commission, we have been able to encourage a hundred projects among the more than a thousand submitted.
Who are the 129 winners? Slightly more women (51%) than men (48%), a majority from the Paris area (64%), fewer from the provinces (23%) or abroad (12%). Above all they have in common the fact that they share with us the dilemmas of which they often feel prisoners: on one hand, writing projects in a “classical” and conventional way, and perhaps having the chance of a television broadcast on a major television channel; on the other, formulating proposals which are more singular, risky, personal with the fear that they find no television broadcaster.
Of the five films chosen – with the “Brouillon d’un rêve” jury and reading commission – for screening this year, one was broadcast on RTBF in Belgium, one had a theatrical distribution, two were or will be transmitted by one or several local television stations (Bip TV, Vosges TV, LMTV Le Mans) and finally one was posted on Mediapart.
If many of the authors we meet still want to believe in new possibilities, in a different, audacious television, and if we observe an average television broadcast rate of 49% since the creation of “Brouillon d’un rêve”, we observe that this rate has dropped significantly (33% between 2003 and 2013, excluding the three most recent years of winners whose works are still in production). A considerable number of creators advance alone, at whatever cost, without a broadcaster – sometimes even voluntarily without a producer – with the goal of showing their works in cinemas, at festivals – with no or extremely poor remuneration.
This day of screenings is dedicated to all freedom-loving filmmakers!
Anne Georget
President of La Scam
Debates in the presence of the directors.