What role do documentaries play in 2009?
We obviously can’t talk about documentaries in the same way we did fifteen or twenty years ago. Back then, documentaries were really considered as a minor genre, the poor relation of films. Not only were fewer documentaries made than today (the digital revolution was yet to happen), they were also looked down on or had a low profile, at the very least. With a few rare exceptions, cinema reviews and critics paid no attention to them. Any filmmaker worth their salt made dramas. From this point of view, things have changed a little, even if the situation is far from perfect! There’s still a lot of ambiguity surrounding documentaries. Because you can see “real” situations and “real” people, many viewers take what they see on screen as REALITY. And since it’s REALITY, it can’t be a “film”!
In fact, the term documentary now covers an extremely wide range of practices. Just like some fictional films have big budgets and others small budgets, there are documentaries made by a single person - in DV format - and there are super-productions like Océans, the film that Jacques Perrin is in the process of finishing, which required three years of filming in every sea in the world. So you can’t talk about documentaries in general any more, you need to be specific. What’s more, the general public still confuses documentaries with magazine programmes, a misunderstanding perpetuated by TV.

Isn’t there a paradox here? On the one hand, the genre is developing strongly, while on the other hand, the exposure given to this major output is extremely limited.
The situation is pretty paradoxical, it’s true. When you spend time on the festival circuit, you realise that there has been an explosion in the documentary genre, both in terms of the number of films made and the enthusiasm these events generate, with programmes often reflecting a huge variety of styles and approaches. New festivals are being launched every year in Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the Middle East... I was in Bogota last September, followed by Mexico, and very recently in Damas, for the second Dox Box festival, an independent event that a small group of enthusiasts recently - and very bravely - organised in this country where, for the last forty years, documentary has been indistinguishable from propaganda... Everywhere you go, the film theatres are full, there are forums and debates, it’s really taken off! On the other hand, TV networks are less adventurous, to say the least, particularly in terms of form. There are a few exceptions, of course: ARTE, as always, although it has slipped a little, and a few Scandinavian networks, but overall, television is far from a good measure of the rich, diversity offering out there. You can talk about anything on TV, as long as it stays within certain limits and takes a reassuring, standardised form - in a word, it has to be entertaining. It’s as if there are two parallel worlds that never meet. The subjective dimension of documentary making, with its potential to disturb, is not tolerated on TV. Anything that makes you doubt, awakens your critical senses or helps people escape the boxes we put them in is not the done thing on TV. TV, like bromide, helps send us to sleep. Bromide, you know... the substance that used to be secretly slipped into the wine drunken by soldiers to dampen their sex drive! It reminds me of something that Patrick Le Lay [the former CEO of France’s leading private TV channel, TF1] once said: “What we sell to Coca Cola is available human brain time...” With a few rare exceptions, nothing you see at Cinéma du Réel, FID (Marseille), the Festival dei Popoli (Florence) or Punto de Vista (Pampelune) reaches the TV screen. Network managers only seem to think in terms of “boxes” - and whatever exists outside the box is axed - and in terms of “events”. To break the routine, attract big audiences and outwit their competitors, they permanently need to create “events” and, from this point of view, context is everything. We are constantly jumping from one commemoration to another, from anniversaries to “special evenings”...
The last paradox is that, over the last ten years, we have seen a resurgence in the number of documentaries shown in film theatres, particularly in Paris; but there’s so much on offer, and the competition is so great, that most films disappear almost as soon as they are shown. So in conclusion, despite the improvements made over the last few years, the fate of documentaries remains fragile.

Has the way you work as a documentary maker changed over the years?
You know, I never decided to become a “documentary maker”, I never wanted to carve out a niche for myself and stay there. What’s more, I hate the term “documentary maker”. I find it really heavy. My first film happened to be a documentary (ed, La voix de son maître, 1978, co-directed with Gérard Mordillat), and that made me want to do another one, and then one thing led to another as events unfolded. It was around that time I discovered the films of Wiseman, Van der Keuken, Perrault, Kramer and Boris Lehman, whose styles and approaches piqued my curiosity and motivated me to move forward in the genre, although I was still unaware of its scale. So yes, like everyone, I change, both because I am part of a general movement and developments in technology, mentalities and production practices, but also because each film offers me the opportunity to explore new avenues, to ask myself new questions. Between La voix de son maître, which immerses us in the world of management, La moindre des choses, filmed at La Borde psychiatric clinic, and Retour en Normandie, the relationships with the people filmed are not the same, each film is a unique adventure.

If I applied a certain method to every film, it would really bore me.

Do you see yourself as an improviser, like a jazz musician?
I’d say that for each new film I need to define a departure point, a framework within which things can emerge. By framework I mean everything that you put together to generate desire. The psychiatrist Jean Oury invented a wonderful expression that I quote a lot: “plan for chance.” For me, making a film is a little like that. When the shooting starts, I don’t know what the final end point is, or the details of the path it is going to take. A lot of things are still up in the air and depend on what happens as relationships develop between different people... So I don’t base my films on a carefully worked out point of view or a sum of knowledge accumulated beforehand and which needs to be put back together. On the contrary, I base them on what I don’t know, on a desire to go towards the unknown. It’s more risky, but it’s a lot more exciting. With me, the method merges with the films themselves, and what I like doing is starting from nothing, inventing the film while I’m doing it and being able to search for it for as long as possible.

Does that mean that you make films more to learn than to teach?
Yes, because for me it’s not about addressing a subject. On the contrary, I try to free myself from this educational dimension that limits the cinematographic scope of a project right from the start. The example of La ville Louvre is pretty enlightening in this respect: there isn’t a word of explanation. But I had to stick to my guns. During the editing, the co-producers wanted to make me write a commentary. For Le pays des sourds, my idea was to immerse the audience in the unfamiliar world of sign language, without explaining how it worked or helping them understand, even if that meant they got a little lost, at least at the beginning. It was a way of making them experience - with the shoe on the other foot - what deaf people may feel in our own world. When the idea for this film first emerged, I didn’t go out and look for specialists, doctors, psychologists, parents, people who had an opinion on the subject, because I didn’t want to put the film on a certain track even before I had met the main players themselves. If I had done that, the deaf people would have got the impression that I thought of them as “subjects”, objects to study. If they opened their doors to me as they did, it was because they were receptive to the fact that I was learning the basics of their language and that I wanted to communicate directly with them, without intermediaries or interpreters.

The documentary units of TV networks increasingly ask filmmakers for certain commitments...
Before risking their money, networks want guarantees, and that’s understandable. And the fact that this involves writing doesn’t seem to me to be excessive! It’s important to write, not only to source the finance for the film, but for yourself as well... But it’s sometimes a little complicated, especially when the network asks you for information that’s difficult to supply because the filming hasn’t started yet: a comprehensive list of sequences, a chronology, the detail of what the people filmed will say... Personally, the writing phase is something I love, even if it’s sometimes hard to knuckle down to it. You need to find the tone, the entry point and then you can start! I’m convinced that if you enjoy writing, it shows in the text, and that has an effect on the readers.

How would you explain the global success of To Be and To Have?
I was the first to be surprised by its success! Just think about it - a documentary on an apparently humdrum subject, fairly slow in pace, and filmed with few resources in a small rural village... So why was it such a success? There are some elements I don’t understand, that’s for sure, because sometimes a film might work one month but not a few months later... But I think it is because of the subject! It’s a subject that might seem ordinary, but in reality it isn’t, because school marks a decisive passage in everyone’s lives. It’s probably also because it’s the only place where we are forced to go when we are small, and where we can no longer go when we’re grown up. That gives rise to a certain curiosity. When you have children, you’d like to be able to go back, to slip secretly into their class to see how things are... Especially since schools today are experiencing difficulties or are under threat. In every country I travelled to for the film, I heard the same thing: a profound sense of concern about violence, inequality, overcrowded classrooms, a breakdown in trust between teachers and parents, etc. At a basic level, school reflects the violence in our society and from this point of view the film offered something reassuring which brought people closer together: the way things hobbled along, the mixture of younger and older children, a sense of solidarity, a slightly gruff teacher, with an old style but conscientious, the embodiment of the secular, republic school... And then there were Nathalie’s tears, Jojo’s facetiousness, all these children that we could identify ourselves with. It’s a film that people wanted to share, to see together.

Curiosphere.tv is a huge hit thanks in part to its interface, which closely resembles Youtube and Dailymotion.
Set up just over two years ago by the teams at France 5, the Curiosphere.tv portal is an offshoot of the education section of the TV network’s website. For Jean-Marc Merriaux, director of educational activities at France 5, however, there’s no doubt that Curiosphere.tv also offers original editorial content that differs from that of the TV network, which provides the model for the website. “Although most of the programmes broadcast on this website come from France 5, Curiosphere.tv produces 15% to 20% of its content in its own way. This is particularly the case when it decides to cover current events, such as La Semaine des Médias and the Cannes International Film Festival. Curiosphere then offers specific content produced internally or with the help of external producers or audiovisual schools. Curiosphere.tv is organised like a traditional network with a service responsible for the acquisition of programmes from France 5 or other producers and distributors of educational content, but also an editorial committee that regularly defines the content that will be highlighted on the site.”

Obviously Curiosphere.tv has its own web developers. Their responsibilities include the editing and promotion of audiovisual programmes in a way that makes them easy to watch and sustains the interest of the web viewer. Each of the videos available online does not last more than five minutes. They are generally accompanied by a short text and other videos linked to the same subject.

The developers of Curiosphere.tv have also created community modules within this web platform, such as the ZeProfs (“The Teachers”) area. ZeProfs offers teachers the possibility to communicate and share resources with the rest of the teaching community, create a video blog, benefit from numerous exclusive resources (videos, a set of interactive maps, multimedia files, etc.) and even use a small video on-line editing tool, offering teachers a simple way of using audiovisual media as a teaching aid in class.

Hit with audiences

Curiosphere.tv is a major hit with viewers, attracting almost 200,000 visitors every month, with some 3 million page views per 500,000 visits. This success inspired Jean-Marc Merriaux and his team at France 5 Education to organise the creation of a major European educational audiovisual portal over the coming months. This ambitious project will bring together European partners, including a large number of TV networks, both public and private. It has a budget of 4 million euros, mainly provided by the European Commission, with France 5 contributing 2 million euros in material. The European website will require 30 months of development, with an initial version ready for launch in January 2010. The site will then be subject to a series of tests over a number of months. Alongside this major European project, France 5 Education is also keen to develop its pioneering role in the field of interactivity. At Sunny Side of the Doc, it will screen a preview of a web documentary on obesity in France produced by Samuel Bollendorff, the same journalist behind the particularly successful multimedia documentary “Voyage au bout du Charbon”, broadcast on the website of the French daily, Le Monde. Education as a field for exploration - now there’s an idea!

Fabienne Fourquet, A&E Television Networks (AETN):
localised new media distribution

A joint venture between ABC, Hearst and NBC, AETN (800 employees in 140 countries) produces a number of leading themed channels, including History Channel and Biography Channel, and creates one thousand hours of HD programmes for digital platforms each year. AETN also produces short programmes adapted to these platforms. This vertical strategy aims to introduce audiences to its complete range of networks.

What is your role at AETN?
I develop partnerships with operators in order to optimise the use of each new Internet platform. For example, I initiate partnerships with global Internet platforms, such as Youtube and MSN. I also provide assistance to “local” themed TV channels with which we work to help them develop their own web portals. The development of our distribution activities is also based on programme sales agreements with the channels themselves, such as the Histoire channel in France. Lastly, I am responsible for developing new products, such as iPhone applications.
History Channel is unusual in that it has a themed channel targeted at a mass audience…
History has a much wider definition of history than in Europe for this type of media. Our scope extends from the origins of the universe to yesterday! This is why it attracts a mass audience, beyond even the international dimension of the History Channel, which is far greater than more traditional themed channels like Histoire in France.

You are also closely involved in the education sector...
We’re involved in lots of initiatives, particularly in the US, where we have ties with more than 250,000 teachers. Every three months, we send them a guide featuring programmes that might be useful in their classes. These programmes are downloadable from our website. We also take part in a group called Cable in the Classroom (CIC). The idea is that every morning from 7 to 8 am, we broadcast a programme that teachers are allowed to record and show to their pupils. We also give them educational aids to go with the programmes. We have won several awards for this initiative. We are also involved in international activities, including the screening of documentaries in film theatres, to which we invite classes. We adapt our material to each particular country. In Israel, for example, every year in June we broadcast, in partnership with a cable platform, some twenty programmes related to the Israeli equivalent of the baccalaureate.
What forms the basis of your multimedia product offering?
Our TV programme stores. For History Channel, we are usually the only producer, which of course makes it easier to use the multimedia rights.

What is your economic model?
We have several models: some multimedia platforms are fee-based, while others rely on advertising. Everything to do with mobile phones is generally fee-based, whereas web videos are usually free. In the US, many long web videos are paid for through advertising, but in Europe that’s still not possible, since the advertising resources are, most of the time, inadequate to cover the distribution costs.

Has the recession had an impact on the market?
Although TV advertising revenues have been badly affected, the drop has been less severe for the web and web video. For video, we’re even forecasting a 20% increase per year over the next five years. There’s a certain logic to all this: companies have smaller marketing budgets so they are investing more in cheaper media.

What does the future hold for the History Channel?
The challenge facing us now could be summarised as follows: how to expand the definition of our brand? In other words, how to be more than a channel, a media that creates content around history? We have several content and service development ideas along these lines, such as the production of short videos accessible via GPS, which would tell you the history of the place you are in. We are already planning pilots for certain towns, which could interest a medium such as Google Maps. The reuse of our TV content to create a resources database on the web is another potential opportunity.

Online visitor registration for Sunny Side of the Doc is open until 18 June and at the Espace Encan from 22 June.

Grand Ecran Documentaire – 12 films will be screened free of charge at the Médiathèque Michel Crépeau in La Rochelle and six exceptional films will be previewed at the Espace Encan, while visitors to the Médiathèque will enjoy free access to 37 films - Consult the programme at: www.sunnysideofthedoc.com

AST – Sciences et Images, Wednesday 27 and Thursday 28 May at the Forum des Images:
www.science-television.com/accueil.php5

During its seventy-year history, the NFB has produced more than 13,000 works which have received more than 5000 awards, including 12 Oscars. The NFB has decided to promote this prestigious heritage by making available an enormous online video library of its films. Tom Perlmutter, Government Film Commissioner and Chair of the National Film Board, can barely conceal his enthusiasm for the project: “The initial idea was to make major works in the history of Canadian cinema, such as the films of Pierre Perrault, Michel Brault and Claude Jutra, more widely available.
This virtual video library was put online a little over three months ago and already offers around one thousand films which can be freely accessed by all visitors to the website. 60% of the films are in English and 40% in French. It required a huge effort to digitise the films over an 18-month period. We wanted to ensure that the quality was much higher than the videos broadcast on Youtube. A lot of work was to obtain the broadcasting rights for these films, many of which date from the 50s and 60s.”

New creative opportunities

This database, accessible via the NFB website, is designed to operate long after the organisation’s 70th birthday celebrations are over. As the interactive experience builds up over time, it will become a sort of portal dedicated to the founding works of Canadian cinema.
The setting up of this virtual video library also provided an opportunity to reflect more generally on changes to the creation process following the development of digital technologies and on ways of creating a new cinematographic language that takes into account the advent of these new technologies.
Tom Perlmutter describes the thinking behind this new approach: “The NFB is one of the few public bodies in the world to benefit from considerable resources to produce and distribute films. We therefore have a responsibility and even a duty in my view to take creative risks. The NFB has always existed at the crossroads between new technologies and social change, altering the way in which cinematographic works are created. In Quebec, “direct cinema” is closely linked to the appearance of small G cameras and synchronised sound which arrived on the market at the same time as the Quiet Revolution began to offer new, freer spaces for the creation of documentaries.

This gave rise at the end of the Fifties and early Sixties to major works such as La suite du monde by Pierre Perrault. Ten years later, businesses were established to further develop socially-aware filmmaking.”

Today, there is a greater emphasis on the development of new technologies, such as web videos, which made a major contribution to Barack Obama’s victory in the recent American elections. “We are currently at a turning point in terms of democratic change and developments in the use of new digital technologies. At the NFB, we think that we can take part in these major changes by supporting the creation of original and innovative works.”

Experimental writing on the recession

In order to address the economic crisis, for example, the NFB is launching a new film form that combines the creativity of eight different filmmakers from across Canada. Each of them will explore in their own way the lives of ordinary people and the changes brought about by the recession. “The end result will be a totally original collaborative work. This documentary aims to be an organic, non-linear work that permanently evolves over 18 months. The creation process will mark a departure from the set way in which documentaries are made, that is, filming, editing and broadcasting according to an unchangeable calendar of events. There’s a whole series of collective creation practices in the musical field, with the development of Mash-up, which work along the same lines”.
In the same vein, the NFB recently selected two French-speaking and four English-speaking filmmakers from around one hundred established names to take up artist residencies for a two-year period during which they will be asked to create documentary films for film theatres. “We will ask them to push the boundaries of the documentary genre for film theatres and provide them with support by inviting other celebrated filmmakers to help them in their work including, recently, Wim Wenders.” And this is just the start. The NFB is teaming with ideas and has plans to “enrich film vocabulary in the 21st century and to push out the boundaries of form and content with community cinema projects, multi-platform productions, interactive cinema and stereoscopic animation..."

The NHK Educational TV channel was launched on 10 January 1959 and initially broadcasted four hours and 20 minutes of programmes every day. The aim of the channel was to exploit the cultural and educational benefits of television and to play a distinctive role in schools and family or community education. It was also meant to meet public demand for more educational and cultural programmes on television, and to protect young people from the harmful effects of the more physical aspects of some entertainment programmes, as well as to contribute to their personal development. Over time, the channel expanded its range of broadcasts and developed a vast selection of programmes targeted at children and schools, as well as leisure and language programmes, and those aimed at teenagers and young adults, which highlight issues such as well-being, art and culture. NHK Educational TV currently broadcasts for 21 hours a day and its educational and cultural programmes represent at least 75% of the programme grid. Although the TV channel remains at the core of NHK Educational TV’s output, several web and mobile telephone platforms have been developed.