U.S. Documentary Filmmakers And Execs Shake Off The Post-Boom Gloom & Ponder Life After The Golden Age — Cannes
24.05.2024 - 13:17
/ deadline.com
Being away from home allows room for perspective, and for a group of U.S.-based documentary experts who made the trip to Cannes, the glass remains half full, despite the headwinds. The closure of Participant, Showtime Docs, CNN Films scaling back and belt-tightening across the board have led many to posit that a Golden Age of documentary films has ended. A discussion in the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival begged the question: If the Golden Age is over, what comes next?
For the assembled speakers, there was an acceptance of the challenges, but also a desire to take a long view and to look to the future.
“With the market retracting and some distribution outlets not being replaced by others, we’re forced to be creative again about how we get these films out to market, how we find audiences,” said Cinetic Media’s Jason Ishikawa during the Deadline-hosted panel.
Imagine was in Cannes with the Ron Howard-helmed Jim Henson Idea Man, about the eponymous creator of The Muppets. Imagine Documentaries President, Sara Bernstein, agreed that the perfect storm the docs industry has weathered means there will be a rethink in terms of financing.
“At Imagine we’re starting to finance or co-finance more of our projects from the start,” she said. “I think it’s about how do you get those projects started? And I think with the success of documentaries there is a new generation of investors who are interested. And then you can bring them back to a Netflix or an HBO Max or a Frontline, or the theatrical distributors who are still putting documentaries out there.”
Nanette Burstein also premiered a film at Cannes, Elizabeth Taylor: The Lost Tapes, which Deadline reviewer Pete Hammond called a “a satisfying journey through one of