2016 Nous sommes le documentaire / La Boucle documentaire Nous sommes le documentaire / La Boucle documentaire
Thursday, 25 at 3:00 pm, Salle Cinéma
Documentary cinema… from the shadows between floors to the light!
For nearly two years, the world of documentary film has faced a serious crisis. Beyond the partial solutions that have been provided, the growing unease has not found a fundamentally satisfying response.
What place does one really want for documentary film in France today?
We all know to what extent the questioning of the world carried by documentary film, its point of view on the Real, distanced, frontal, from the side, political, aesthetic, are vital points of view for our society.
Yet, as each day goes by, this richness, this vitality, this wellspring is contaminated by the growing space provided for objects filmed in a journalistic style – without the rigour of true journalism, by an industrial mindset in the production of programmes, which ignores diversity of form and thought, by a hypnotic spectacularisation designed to entertain under the pretext of federating the audience.
Certainly, remarkable films emerge from the interstices of the audiovisual or film industries, but they are made by rowing against the tide, in indecent financial conditions, often at the cost of precarisation.
Certainly, these films can be successful with audiences over inventive distribution networks combining cinemas, local television channels, DVD, VOD platforms, media libraries, museums, associations, but these marginal means remain marginal, without prospects of real development.
In a manner of speaking, documentary is stuck between floors.
The present system of funding support is based on several principles written in the CNC’s regulations. At the heart of these principles is the unbreakable line separating the audiovisual from the cinema. It has its reasons on certain points, but we consider that it has become a paradoxical constriction for documentary and that the CNC prevents itself from fully carrying out its mission to support creation.
We have to reconsider things for documentary film, invent rules that take into account the evolution of production and distribution.
Why couldn't the CNC, returning to its original mission, set up an autonomous aid fund for documentary creation, a third pillar of support, with specific rules adapted to documentary film: media timetable, certification, advance on box office receipts, support for short films, distribution and broadcasting?
We call for the setting up of a working group of reflection.
So that, from its position stuck between floors, documentary may finally make its way to greater light.
The Collective Nous sommes le documentaire
La Boucle documentaire
La Boucle documentaire is an unprecedented grouping of fourteen regional and national associations of film authors and directors who have joined together the fight for a viable economic basis for the creation and distribution of non-standardised documentary films.
In June 2015, our group published a platform of proposals for the reshaping of documentary support funds and demanded a place for creators in on-going reflection.
This demand opened the way for the involvement of La Boucle documentaire in discussions under way concerning films produced with local television companies. The associations in La Boucle documentaire also actively contributed to the reflection initiated by the CNC about the renewal of cooperation agreements between the state and regional or local authorities in favour of cinema and audiovisual production.
On the eve of the writing of these conventions, it is of the utmost importance to restate that the formulation of public policies on film and audiovisual production cannot take place without the contribution of authors and directors, wherever decisions are made concerning them.
La Boucle documentaire