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 a major online project, GDP – Measuring the Human Side of the Canadian Economic Crisis. The NFB’s director of French programming, Monique Simard, a longtime union leader and former politician known for her involvement with social issues, took the initiative for this endeavor.
From the beginning, her intuition was that the economic crisis would not be a passing thing, but would profoundly affect the lives and directions of many people. The GDP project allowed many filmmakers and photographers across the country to follow people affected by the crisis. I haven’t had a chance to look at all of the stories, naturally, but here are some initial impressions.
First off, the site’s architecture is impressive, as is its design. We have access to stories told in both official languages, with subtitles as needed. You can watch multiple episodes in the order of choice. You can comment, share, and use social media tools to talk about the stories.
As for the content, I found it very uneven generally. There are some excellent stories, such as “Auto-workers at a crossroads“, the story of a couple who both work in the auto industry in Oshawa, Brian and Cassandra, who lose their jobs and must fight to survive. It’s very much in the documentary tradition, without the dramatic structure but in exchange having the advantage of following their story over time in several episodes.
The same goes for a report on an immigrant family who are staying in a motel in British Columbia – we enter in their universe, we understand the challenges they have to surmount, and their emotions. Occasionally a series starts well, like the story of a group of young women in the West who are trying to get out of debt – but at a certain point nothing much happens, the story isn’t going anywhere. In addition there are some stories that don’t reveal much of anything, neither a strong human story, nor strong production values.
One of the positive surprises of this project is the quality of the photo essays, produced notably by Renaud Philippe in Quebec, Brian Howell in Vancouver, Goh Irotomo and Craig Chivers in Toronto. The above photo is taken from one of Renaud Philippe’s photo essays titled “Willpower is power.”
Next week: a conversation with Hélène Choquette, director and coordinator of GDP/PIB.
Thanks to Tobi Elliott pour her help with this post.
