Industry analysis
Helping docs reach out This year IDFA is offering a tailor-made workshop to explore new ways of connecting social issue films with like-minded audiences. Melanie Goodfellow investigates.
Emily Verellen
Outreach campaigns connecting social issue films with the audiences affected by the topics they explore through social media, community events and targeted screenings are increasingly popular in the US, but less so elsewhere in the world. IDFA will be exploring this practice with a new outreach workshop during this year’s edition. The festival’s industry office has joined forces on the initiative with social activist body The Bertha Foundation, sponsor of the IDFA Bertha Fund, and the private US-based The Fledgling Fund, aimed at films that can reap social change. “There are more and more outreach initiatives in the US and also the UK but very few such campaigns in mainland Europe or elsewhere in the world,” says IDFA industry chief Adriek van Nieuwenhuyzen. “We’ve been talking to The Fledgling Fund for a while now and came up with the idea of a small-scale workshop.”
The films selected for the workshop will be drawn mainly from projects supported by the IDFA Bertha Fund aimed at documentary makers in developing countries. “There are so many great films out there that can be used as tools in strategic ways and have a real impact,” says Rebecca Litchenfeld, director of the Bertha Foundation’s social impact media operations.
who wouldn’t normally watch an art-house film like this.” One of the cancer sufferers in the film, a mother with two young children, has mustered a coach load of supporters from her hometown in the eastern Netherlands for the IDFA premiere and is promoting the work on her Facebook page, Lataster explains. The filmmakers are also hoping to connect with women’s and cancer support groups for a series of special screenings.
The Bertha Foundation was one of the first bodies to get involved in outreach within Europe through its joint UK initiative the Bertha BRITDOC Connect Fund, which has meted out grants and outreach expertise to a dozen films since its creation earlier this year.
In addition Hungarian director Eszter Hajdu will participate with her timely Judgement in Hungary, following the trial of three men who murdered Roma children and adults in a series of violent race-hate crimes, which will premiere in the IDFA Competition for First Appearance.
Three IDFA Bertha Fund-backed projects are among the selected films: Egyptian Nadine Salib’s Mother of the Unborn, Kenyan Peter Murimi’s Lele United and Indian Chandrasekhar Reddy’s Fireflies in the Abyss. Petra and Peter’s Lataster’s IDFA Dutch Documentary Competition contender Awake in a Bad Dream, charting the impact of breast cancer on three women and their families, has also been selected.
The Fledgling Fund’s director of programmes and communications Emily Verellen will lead the workshop with the support of Litchenfeld. “Outreach campaigns are about reaching the people who are most touched by the issues in a film. It’s not about achieving millions of eyeballs but rather connecting with a very targeted audience and getting them to engage and act on the issues in a movie,” explains Verellen. “It goes beyond crowd building to how to get the crowd to take action.”
Dutch Peter Lataster and his German-born wife Petra hope the workshop will give them some pointers on how to reach women and relatives whose lives have been affected by breast cancer. The pair made the film to raise awareness of what it means to live with the illness.
“There’s a lot of programming around this concept in the US and now it’s starting to spread globally too. It’s not enough to make a social issue film, put it out in the world and then expect it to prompt change. There has to be a strategy to make sure the film doesn’t end up collecting dust on the shelf,” she adds. Launched in 2005, the Fledgling
“Everyone knows about breast cancer but very few people understand what it means to live with the illness and how it can affect the whole family,” says Lataster. “We’re already seeing evidence of the film sparking interest from groups of people
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Fund has supported 276 creative media projects to date. “We focus on films that we think will achieve social change and our sweet spot is outreach campaigns,” says Verellen. Recent documentaries supported by The Fledgling Fund include Kirby Dick’s The Invisible War, investigating the high incidence of sexual abuse in the US military. This project was also supported by the Bertha BRITDOC Connect Fund. “Nobody knew about the extent of the problem, the film totally blew the lid off the issue and there’s a campaign to change the way sex crimes are dealt with in the military, to take out the chain of command and get the criminal justice system involved,” Verellen continues. “We connected with the film three to four months before it premiered at Sundance and we were immediately blown away by it. We provided funding and strategy support to help them come-up with the right campaign.” Dana Nachman and Don Hardy’s The Human Experiment, which screens in IDFA Panorama, has also received Fledgling Fund support. The film examines how thousands of potentially health-threatening chemicals are in everyday household products and foodstuffs. “The makers want people to take consumer action and stop buying products that are hurting them,” says Verellen. The IDFA workshop will revolve around a seminar on the basic components of setting up an outreach campaign and a group brainstorming for each project, followed by a one-on-one session with Verellen and Litchenfeld.