Film Festivals

By Betsy A. McLane, Ph.D.

(Below is an excerpt of material that was intended for the Appendix of A New History of Documentary Film.)

The increased screening of documentaries in commercial theatres discussed in chapter 17 owes not a little to the rise in the number and quality of film festivals that showcase the form. There is a natural symbiosis between the popularity of documentaries and the popularity of documentary films in festivals. One aids the other. During the first half of the 2000s, the growing interest in documentaries swept many titles from film festivals into multiplexes, where the number of small screens for specialized product was also increasing. The late 1990s and early 2000s saw an exponential growth in the sheer number of festivals put on worldwide, and in the U.S. in particular. It is possible to be at a film festival in some part of the globe every day of the year. It is probably possible to be at a film festival in the United States every day of the year. These festivals in themselves create a niche market for documentaries, since every festival programmer is competing with others to have the premiere showing of any given film. Navigating and exploiting these festivals is something that savvy documentary makers must now understand.

Documentaries have been a part of film festivals as long as there have been film festivals. There have also long been festivals devoted to documentary. Nyon, Switzerland was one of the first modern festivals to focus on the documentary.

In the past decade in the United States, no festival has been more responsible for the explosion of interest and commercial exposure for documentaries than Sundance. “Robert Redford (its founder and patron saint) has always supported, talked about and embraced documentaries,” according to festival director Geoff Gilmore. Sundance ventually provided the same legitimization to documentaries that it had for years bestowed on independent fiction films. In 2004, Stacy Peralta’s Riding Giants, an exploration of surfing culture, was the first documentary to ever be the opening night film. Peralta had a previous hit at Sundance and in theatres with Dogtown and Z Boys (2002), his homage to the skateboarding culture of his youth in Santa Monica, California. This opening night was another signal that the documentary had arrived in terms of Hollywood’s independent film scene.

Five-hundred-and-forty documentaries were submitted to Sundance in 2004, up 10% from 2003, which was 10% more than the 2002 submissions. Of these, only a handful of these were screened during the festival. That means that each year hundreds of US made documentaries are floating around seeking a festival home. An example of a documentary greatly helped by Sundance was Capturing the Friedmans, which was awarded the grand prize for documentaries in 2004. Later it was shown on HBO and released in theatres. Because it deals with the sensitive issue of child molestation in an ambiguous, non-traditional way, the film was not a likely candidate for theatrical release. It’s somewhat controversial approach, in which the filmmaker does not take a clear stand on the guilt or innocence of the convicted child molesters, led to critical debate in the press. “Winning the prize got the film invited to other festivals. And it hiked up the profile a notch, which is very important for difficult films with difficult subjects that are hard enough to sell,” said director Andrew Jarecki. The list of significant North American documentaries that have premiered at Sundance is impressive. It includes, among many others: Joel DeMott and Jeff Kreined’s Seventeen (1985), Ross McElwee’s Sherman’s March (1987), Al Reinerd’s For All Mankind (1989), Mark Kitchell’s Berkeley in the Sixties (1990), Barbara Kopple’s American Dream (1991), Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky’s Brother's Keeper (1992), Terry Zwigoff’s Crumb (1995), Leon Gast’s When We Were Kings (1996), Kirby Dick’s Sick (1997), Liz Garbus and Jonathan Stack’s The Farm (1998) Jeffrey Friedman and Rob Epstein’s Paragraph 175 (2000), Chris Smith’s Home Movie (2001), Doug Pray’s Scratch (2002), Steve James’ Stevie (2003), Ross Kauffman and Zana Briski’s Born Into Brothels (2004) and Eugene Jarecki’s Why We Fight (2005). Starting in 2003, Sundance, which had traditionally been limited to mostly U.S. made films, introduced a world documentary section, reflecting the globalization of the field.

Festivals in North America devoted exclusively to the documentary include: The Hot Springs (Arkansas) Documentary Film Festival, Full Frame (New York), Hot Docs in Toronto, and many others. Historically, the festival situation in Europe is different. Documentaries and documentarians have generally been more respected there, and the tradition of festivals that showcase documentaries is long. The most significant nonfiction festival in Europe in the Twenty First Century is the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam, run by Ally Derks. It is a huge, comprehensive world festival that attracts public and professionals alike to almost two weeks of screenings in six theatres. It also includes an important film market and the original Forum pitching sessions. In Asia, the Yamagata Documentary Film festival, held every other year in Japan, is perhaps the most prestigious. The leading documentary film festival in Latin America is called “It's All True.” Held in Brazil in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, it is considered to be the most important in Latin America. By the middle of the first decade of the 21st Century there were over twenty film festivals devoted to documentary around the world. Click here more complete list.

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