Documentary Field Notes and Flashpoints: category

I come from a family of teachers and the artists. From the former, in particular my mother Kerstin and her father Effe, I learned about the value of intellectual curiosity and learning. From the artists I feel I learned not just about aesthetics, but also about the value of a creative interpretation of the world [...]

This week at Sunny Side of the Doc at La Rochelle, the NFB and Arte.tv France announced a collaboration for the production of webdocumentaries. They will produce one documentary per year, with a budget of $100,000 CDN. The two companies already have considerable experience with webdocs.
For almost a year, the NFB has hosted [...]

Cette semaine à Sunny Side of the Doc à La Rochelle, l’ONF et ARTE France ont annoncé une collaboration pour la production de documentaires pour le web. Ils produiront un documentaire par année, avec un budget de 100.000 $ Can. Les deux ont déjà une expérience considérable avec les webdocs.

Depuis presque un an déjà, [...]

I have heard many people say that multi-platform production is ‘just another way to tell a story.’ It sounds simple, clear-cut, reassuring.
But is that it? I think not. There is a huge difference in the way you can communicate content with a multi-platform project.
When you tell a linear story, you are grappling with [...]

I went to see Garry Beitel’s film The Socalled Movie when it premiered in Montreal a few days ago. A terrific evening: great film, great audience, all very Montreal. The post-screening Q & A was followed by a concert by the film’s main character, musician Socalled (aka Josh Dolgin) with his band.

Socalled [...]

This is a still taken from an excellent interactive web documentary, Prison Valley by David Dufresne & Philippe Brault, produced by arte.tv and upian.com, in partnership with FranceInter, Libération.fr and Yahoo.com.

The world of documentary production is in the midst of an upheaval, the likes of which have not been seen since the coming of cinema [...]

There is a reason why I write this in English. Most francophones in Quebec who take an interest in cinema will already be aware of what I’m about to tell you.

“There are adults who have antennas for the secret pain of our little ones – forms of suffering that are often taken to be [...]

Patricio Henriquez, Robert Cornellier et Raymonde Provencher.
L’autre jour, à l’occasion de la remise du Prix Arthur Lamothe, dans le cadre du Festival de films sur les droits de la personne de Montréal, j’ai eu l’occasion de rendre hommage aux deux réalisateurs et la réalisatrice de Macumba International: Robert Cornellier, Patricio Henriquez et Raymonde Provencher. Vous [...]

Guinea pig detectives cover page. Illustration by Pierre Durand.
Together with my friend and colleague Patricia Bergeron I spent last week in intensive consultations about cross-platform documentaries - meaning documentaries which aren’t just a film or a TV program but also play themselves out on the web, including in the social networks. ( Cross-platform or transmedia [...]

Béthièle when she was five.
A documentary filmmaker in Canada today might be forgiven for being discouraged. The combined impact of the crisis of television, the more general economic crisis, and the Conservative government’s policies are having a devastating impact on our traditional sources of funding. There is definitely a ‘paradigm shift’ underway. New models of [...]