documentary industry

Documentary Festivals, Documentary Film Industry, Documentary Productions

The Documentary Film Industry in 2019: Insights from Peter Hamilton


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Recently, we had the privilege to host Peter Hamilton. Peter is an executive producer and senior consultant to industry leaders, governments and nonprofit organizations in the non-fiction television sector. He is the founder/editor/publisher of DocumentaryBusiness.com, the indispensable weekly newsletter on the non-fiction TV business where he sheds light on current trends in the documentary film industry. Here we discuss the pros and cons of the rise of powerful SVOD channels with the capacity to reach a global audience. Here’s the interview our CEO, Melanie Rozencwajg had with Peter.

Peter, you are a major expert in the documentary film industry and it is a real privilege for us that you are sharing your vision and insights with Archive Valley’s international community. First, can you tell us a bit more about yourself, when was your blog born and how many years did you have the privilege to work and witness the industry changes from inside?

Thank you, Melanie. I have always loved History since I was a little boy, growing up in Victoria, Australia. My mother liked to take me on week-long trips around the bush in her Morris Minor, with a thermos of tea and a package of roast lamb sandwiches on the back seat. She would stop at deserted graveyards and decipher for me the stories behind the migrations, epidemics and shipwrecks that she read in the gravestones. Her curiosity ignited my love of discovering the past. As a young reporter, I became thrilled by how the film archive brings stories from the past to life. I have served as a senior consultant since 1987. My specialization is marketing and business development. One of my first projects was to help plan and then launch Discovery International. Before that, I was an executive at CBS in New York.

Back in 2010, I decided to share my expertise and industry analysis in an online newsletter. I saw a gap in the trade press for revealing the ‘business of the documentary film and unscripted business.’ I’ve been excited to support Archive Valley’s creative solution to archive research since I first met your team at MIPTV 2018 ( you can find the key takeaways from our panel talk here).

Your blog offers a broad perspective on how and what are the reasons for the current shift and changes in the non fictionindustry. Latelyyou’ve elaborated a lot on the changes and challenges the SVOD channels brought to the industry: how does it affect the broadcasters’ business? and does the rise of distribution channels lead to a rise in content/shows/ documentary productions in order to feed all the different distribution channels?

We are about to enter a time when the pipeline of unscripted programming will be cut back. The rise over four decades of hundreds of Cable / Satellite channels drove a massive increase in commissions because each channel needed a certain number of fresh hours, as many as 600 a year, to fill their schedules, particularly their primetimes. And viewers watched repeats in great numbers

Enter online video platforms led by Netflix: Viewers can now watch want they want when they want to. Binge-viewing scripted series became the preferred way of consuming video.

U.S. channels are quite rapidly losing subscribers and viewers, particularly of repeats. Facing declining revenues, many networks have cut back their acquisitions of original unscripted series and specials. This trend will be replicated worldwide, although with the most resistance occurring in Western Europe and UK.

Netflix’s strategy involves a shift towards commissioning feature documentaries that cut through the clutter by involving ‘auteurs’ as directors, and A-Listers as executive producers, talent and often as subject material.  It’s the Hollywood scripted model applied to unscripted, and it most resembles HBO Documentaries’ longtime strategy.

So the non-fictionbusiness is in flux, things are changing, new structures are developing. What’s your view on the global temperature of the non-fictionbusiness overall?

The new global documentary commissioning pipeline is, therefore, a narrower one, with fewer originals flowing through it. But it involves more “Blue Chip” productions, often with much higher budgets than characterized the Cable / Satellite era. Netflix and Amazon are such dominant players worldwide that I don’t see many competitive SVOD platforms emerging soon who will fill out the demand lost as channels cut their budgets and volume.

So my #1 Takeaway: Fewer projects overall. But more big budget documentaries involving A-Listers, and that are developed along the Hollywood model with agents as their packagers.

Is there, in your opinion, a risk that the distribution channels (svod, broadcasters) will suffer like other industries from industry concentration and monopoly?

The new online video model is a duopoly: Netflix and Amazon dominate, with Hulu chasing them. They are evolving to become platforms that offer subscribers everything from $200 million budget star-studded movies to the NBA and Premier League. Amazon enjoys the most sophisticated model because, as Jeffrey Bezos says, “Video helps sell shoes.” The center of power in video entertainment has shifted: It was shared by LA and New York, with London important in many genres, particularly documentaries. And Washington, too. Now, nearly all cellphones are dialing LA. Disney, Comcast, Apple, Facebook and YouTube are also in the picture. They enjoy tremendous resources, but they have been left behind by Amazon and Netflix.  The BBC plus French and German and several other European public broadcasters will remain important commissioners of unscripted programs as they retain strong tax-based funding and loyal if ageing audiences.

In your own words you said that “Despite the challenging business environment, the global documentary film industry and unscripted sector is responsible for $ billions in annual productions and sales”. Will the competition landscape open up new opportunities and raise the quality bar and the amount of content (shows, films, documentaries…) produced to feed the viewers’ appetite for good shows ?

Industry veterans became certain that our sector would grow forever. The shock of this decade is that the boom came to an end. But it’s not a bust. The global unscripted business will remain a huge mega-billion dollar industry compared to its size back in the early Eighties before the Cable / Satellite boom. It will be somewhat smaller, with more high-quality projects eating up the total pie spent on the genre. Channels will continue to commission originals, though fewer of them and with tighter budgets.

Netflix and Amazon are in a growth spurt, spending furiously to grab market share everywhere. Their hectic spending on original, A-Lister commissions will become more selective as they reach maturity. And new entrants to the online video business will chase them, providing new opportunities for filmmakers, including for specialists in archive-base History.

What are in your opinion to you the next big opportunities and challenges producers/ filmmakers will face with this current industry shift?

Oscar-nominated directors or producers who are working with celebs and A-Listers are finding open doors at the SVOD’s, particularly if they are represented by a credible agent.

The mid-size producers who did well with Cable networks will find the going tougher, but they are still earning commissions. Europeans with strong relationships with public broadcasters will continue to do well.

And outside the commercial economy, the documentary film is one of the most prestigious forms of creative expression today. Governments, foundations and the super-rich together spend billions of dollars every year on feature docs. Their motivations range from winning awards and ten minutes of fame to changing minds. The creative talent involved is often amazing, with the art of documentary story-telling forever finding new ways to compel viewers.

Archival documentaries seem to be experiencing a golden age right now – if we add to that market shifts – it looks like archive sources can gain a lot by connecting with international filmmakers who are looking for new ideas and fresh local perspectives on historical events. Is that your reading of the situation? And what opportunities do you believe are out there for them?

Topics that rely on the archive are hot and are features of Netflix’s list of originals and top-performing commissions. Celebrity bio-docs, portraits of great musical artists, True Crime involving unheard of cases: these are among the genres in great demand. The celebrity bio-docs are particularly high-budget projects, often in the $5-10 million range, because of the cost of clearing the archive and music.

Many mid-priced commissions will rely on resourceful directors and researchers to efficiently discover fresh archive sources.

My final Takeaway is that the SVOD leaders are going global, and they are being challenged by local platforms. Giants like Netflix and their local competitors will all need regional productions to win and retain subscribers. We can see this trend in dramatic series created in Turkey, Israel, Scandinavia, India and more territories. Soon there will be an growth spurt in spending on local documentaries, and archive-based History will be one of the preferred genres.

Peter Hamilton is a senior consultant who specializes in business development and marketing for the unscripted video industry. His clients have included NBC, A+E Networks, National Geographic Channels, Global Canal+ and BBC; the Rockefeller Foundation; and governments, notably Singapore’s IMDA. He has planned and helped launch dozens of channels, notably for Discovery International. Peter is the founder, editor & publisher of DocumentaryBusiness.com, giving weekly insider analysis to 20,000+ executives and producers worldwide. He served as an executive for CBS International in New York. His consulting firm has been based in New York since 1987. He served as an executive for CBS International in New York. His consulting firm has been based in New York since 1987.

Archive Researchers, Documentary Productions

Oscars 2019 Documentary Feature Shortlist: The Producers & Funds Behind Their Success


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The 2019 Oscars documentary shortlist was announced last month and the competition will probably see one of the most successful box-office selections of all times. Four of the shortlisted productions (“RGB”, “Free Solo”, “Three Identical Strangers” and “Won’t you be my neighbor”) have already been grossing at more than $10m. No matter who makes it to the nominations, we decided that it’s important to look at some of the production details of each of the 15 films in the shortlist. Producers, funds and decision makers played a key role in their journey to becoming some of the most notable achievements in the genre for 2018. Here are some interesting insights of how they are funded, their co-production partners, their festival rounds and distribution deals – celebrating all the people who made these projects possible and believed in their success.

Shirkers

First feature documentary by Sandi Tan. World premiere at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival, won the Directing award. Winner at Cinema Eye Honors Awards, US, Florida Film Critics Circle Awards, Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards, Philadelphia Film Festival . Produced by Maya Rudolph and Jessica Levin. Acquired by Netflix Originals and released on October 26, 2018 , becoming available in 195 countries and 25 languages. Post-production funding was provided by Doc Society Genesis Grant and Cinereach in addition to a development grant from Sundance.

Minding the Gap

(nominated)

Directed by the first-time filmmaker Bing Liu. World premiere at Sundance, followed by an international one at CPH:DOX. The most awarded film in the selection – 46 wins including awards at Sundance, Hot Docs, Sheffield, CPH:DOX. The film is a co-production of KARTEMQUIN FILMS (Diane Quon), POV (Justine Nagan) and ITVS. Additional funding was provided by Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program with support from Open Society Foundations, JustFilms | Ford Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. It’s currently streaming on Hulu.

Three Identical Strangers

Directed by Tim Wardle. Premiered at Sundance and won the Grand Jury Award for Storytelling. Produced by RAW TV (Becky Read), CNN FILMS (Amy Entelis, Courtney Sexton) and Channel 4 (Sara Ramsden). Currently grossing $12,320,845, it is the 26th most successful project in the all-time documentary box office. The archival production was lead by Beatrice Read and Jack Penman both of whom we are happy to have in Archive Valley’s community of professional archive researchers. The distribution rights were acquired by NEON/ DOGWOOF and CNN is planning a broadcast premiere in 2019.

Dark Money

Directed by Kimberly Reed (“Prodigal Sons”). A production of Big Sky Film Productions, Inc. Co-produced by Big Mouth Productions (Katy Chevigny) and Meerket Media Collective. Premiered at Sundance where it won the Sundance Institute/Amazon Studios Producers Award. The production was supported by Doc Society / The Threshold Foundation, Topic Studios, JustFilms / Ford Foundation, IFP and Sundance. PBS acquired the North American distribution rights. You can watch it on POV SEASON 31, Jan 10th.

HALE COUNTY THIS MORNING, THIS EVENING

(nominated)

First feature documentary by RaMell Ross and probably the most visually unique film in the shortlist. Produced by Danny Glover’s Louverture films and co-produced by Field Of Vision (Laura Poitras & Charlotte Cook) and Bertha Foundation. The production also received additional funding by Cinereach, JustFilms / Ford Foundation, Doc Society / The Threshold FoundationIFP, Tribeca All Access and Sundance. PBS’s ‘Independent Lens’ will broadcast it on Feb 11.

Crime + Punishment

Directed by Stephen Maing (“High Tech, Low Life”). Production companies: Mud Horse Pictures, Field of Vision (Laura Poitras, Charlotte Cook), Sundance Documentary Institute. Received additional funding by Ford Foundation, Gucci Tribeca Documentary Fund, IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund, IFP. The archival producer behind the project was Wyatt Stone who’s also a member of Archive Valley’s community. The film is available on Hulu.

On Her Shoulders

A second documentary feature by Alexandria Bombach after her debut in 2015 with “Frame by Frame”. The project was entirely funded by RYOT Films (Hayley Pappas &.Brock Williams) Premiered and won the documentary directing award at the 2018 Sundance Film Festival. Oscilloscope Laboratories has acquired North American rights for distribution.

Of Fathers and Sons

(nominated)

Directed by Talal Derki. Premiered at Sundance where it was awarded Grand Jury Prize in the World Cinema – Documentary. Produced by BASIS BERLIN Filmproduktion (Tobias Siebert, Eva Kemme, Ansgar Frerich). In co-production with Ventana Film(Hans Robert Eisenhauer ), Impact Partners (Dan Cogan, Jenny Raskin, Geralyn White Dreyfous),  Cinema Group Production, and Südwestrundfunk, Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg in collaboration with ARTE. It received additional funding from Chicago Media Project, Doha Film Institute, IDFA BERTHA Fund, Screen Institute Beirut. Kino Lorber obtained the distribution rights for North America.

The Silence of Others

Directed by Robert Bahar, and Almudena Carracedo, with executive producer Pedro Amoldovar. The project is a co-production of Semilla Verde Productions, American Documentary | POV, Independent Television Service (ITVS) and Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB). Additional funding provided by Corporation For Public Broadcasting (CPB), support from Bertha Foundation, Catapult Film Fund, Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program. Multiple awards including Grand Jury Award – Best Documentary at Sheffield Doc Fest, IDA Pare Lorentz Award, Berlinale Peace Film Award. Distributed by Cinephil.

Charm City

Director: Marilyn Ness, two-time Emmy, Peabody, and DuPont Award-winning producer. Premiered at Tribeca 2018. Produced by Big Mouth Productions (Katy Chevigny) and co-produced by Motto Pictures (Christopher Clements). Funding support from IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund, Catapult Film Fund, Bertha Foundation, The Fledgling Fund, Hartley Film Foundation, and Sundance.

The Distant Barking of Dogs

Directed by Simon Lereng Wilmont, co-production between the Danish documentary powerhouse Final Cut For Real (Monica Hellstrøm, Heidi Elise Christensen), Mouka Filmi, STORY & Bayerischer Rundfunk, and Arte. The film was pitched at GÖTEBORG FILM FESTIVAL, NORDISK PANORAMA & IDFA FORUM. It received funding from Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, Open Society Foundations, Ford Foundation – Just Films and The Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.

Free Solo

(nominated)

A second documentary feature by Jimmy Chinn after his debut in 2015 with “Meru”. A National Geographic Documentary Films release and presentation of a Little Monster Films, Itinerant Media, Parkes+MacDonald/Image Nation production. Executive producers: Walter Parkes, Laurie MacDonald, Tim Pastore, Matt Renner. Premiered at Telluride Festival, won the People’s Choice Award at TIFF. Currently grossing at $11m it is the fourth most successful documentary release of 2018.

 

RBG

(nominated)

Directed and produced by Betsy West and Julie Cohen of Storyville Films, in co-production with CNN FILMS (Amy Entelis & Courtney Sexton). The rights were sold to Magnolia Pictures and Participant Media. Renée Silverman was in charge of the archival production. So far it has generated more than $14m, the second biggest documentary box-office for 2018.


Communion

Directed by first-time filmmaker Anna Zamecka. Premiered at the 69th Locarno Film Festival where it won the Grand Prix of Semaine de la Critique. A co-production between Wajda Studio, HBO Europe (Hanka Kastelicová), Otter Films (Anna Wydra).

Won’t you be my neighbour?

Directed by Morgan Neville and produced by Tremolo Productions ( Caryn Capotosto, Nicolas Ma) with support from Impact Partners (Dan Cogan, Jenny Raskin, Geralyn White Dreyfous). Premiered at Sundance and since then it has gathered 30 festival awards. The archival production was lead by Susan Ricketts and Samantha Casey. It’s currently grossing at $22m and it has become the 12th biggest documentary box-office release of all times.

There will be only one winner at the Oscars award ceremony on 25th of Feb but there are already plenty of remarkable achievements : 12 of the selected productions in the Oscars 2019 documentary shortlist are their creators’ first or second project. 13 premiered at Sundance and 8 of those receiving support from Sundance Institute. Ford Foundation supported 5 projects, Doc Society & IFP – 3 , Cinereach, Impact Partners, ITVS and Catapult Film Fund – 2. Big Mouth Productions, CNN FILMS, and Field of Vision each co-produced 3 films. Congratulation to everyone involved in those projects for making 2018 truly exceptional year for the documentary film industry.

Documentary Festivals, Documentary Productions, Uncategorized

Sunny Side of the Doc 2018: ​Archives & new storytelling, a history of love


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Let’s forget about OTT and TV screens for a minute, because history is not anymore intended to be told only through flat and linear contents. New ways of archival storytelling at the crossroad of the documentary and digital scenes are popping up all over the internet, driven by a desire to embark the youngest audience on more engaging experiences of the past. This craze became “the occasion” for this year’s Sunny Side of the Doc breakfast discussion « Archives & new storytelling, a history of love ». The panel was moderated by the producer Laurent Duret (Bachibouzouk) and as one of the invited panelists, Archive Valley is happy to share with you some insights into this new exciting trend.

Laurent Duret – producer Bachibouzouk, Bruno Masi – Author filmmaker, Amandine Collinet – chief editor digital productions INA, Yoann Gantch – BnF – Partenariat, Mikhail Zygar & Karen Shainyan – founders Future History, Our CEO Melanie Rosencwajg 

We see today a growing number of content creators investing the infinite channels and media offered by the digital world with new types of archive-driven narratives, largely stimulated by the rise of the short-doc form. And when it comes to short form, the influence of Twitter cannot be neglected.

Already in 2011 while being busy blending archive and innovation at studio ArtchiviumLab, we’ve happily discovered the new-born twitter account @HistoryInPics, managed by two teenagers with one clear ambition: creating the buzz out of entertaining and powerful historical photographs picked on the internet and supercharged with a dramatic storytelling. While one can argue that historical truth and data accuracy were not really their point of concern when it all started, the duo’s first tweets went quickly viral, and as a result, we saw an invasion of archival content in the social media. Eventually, none of the myriads of similar twitter accounts created on the same model could compete with the team’ s great sense of spectacle, neither reproduce their huge success: the still-active account @HistoryInPics boasts today more than 4 million followers.

Similarly, the blog project “Retronaut” (See the past like you wouldn’t believe) started in 2010 with WolgangWild’s idea to share his fascination for the nostalgia by showcasing and curating his own collection of odd and eccentric old photographs in so-called ‘capsules’ of time. Three weeks after the launch, the site got 30,000 hits in one day thanks to a post celebrating wonderful Kodachrome color photographs of 1949’s London. In 2014, the blog’ success led to an exclusive partnership with Mashable and Retronaut’s content became the most shared and viewed piece on the whole website. By now more than 40,000 Retronautic photographs were published, each one carefully chosen for its power « to disrupt the viewers’ sense of the past » and to generate a viral hit, based on what Wild established as the S.P.E.E.D. formula: a unique approach for predicting any archival photograph’s potential for drawing an enormous audience.

Most importantly, a great appetite for archival storytelling (when done right) emerged, and thanks to all the disruption in the way content is being distributed, the rise of social media and cross-media made it work even better. Filmmakers and content creators, as well as newspapers and even archival sources, quickly grabbed that unique opportunity to reach a global audience. Let’s shade a light on some of those standout projects that bring archives and history even closer to the contemporary audience.

As a former journalist seeking for new territories apart from the traditional press and the linear documentary, Bruno Masi is one of the pioneers of the web documentary form with his interactive project “La Zone”(2011), revealing the Chernobyl aftermath. A couple of years later on the occasion of the centenary of the WWI, he creates the project 1914 Dernières Nouvelles(co-produced by Arte and Bachibouzouk), an online newspaper that will set a daily appointment with the contemporary audience. In an attempt to immerse the audience into the daily life and escalating dangers of this crucial year, through the use of a pseudo-live temporality, the project displays one archival photograph per day during eight months, together with press articles and additional textual information that help to bring context in some sort of « popcorn narration ». As a partnership between TV channel Arte and newspaper Liberation, the project has been displayed in different channels and platforms simultaneously in order to multiply the impact of the project.

The author’s latest experimental project “Barricade“(co-produced by INA, Bachibouzouk, and Liberation.fr) is based on a similar process, with a web-series of 20 episodes, 20 minutes each, telling hour by hour May 1968’s most violent day. Based on archival footage from INA’s collections, the series aims to respect the historical chronology of the events while the unusual use of voices inputs a fictional and cinematographic storytelling approach to the narration. Should we refer to it as docu-fiction? Not really. Instead, chief editor at digital productions INA Amandine Collinet is more likely to speak about « documented fiction », a new sophisticated form of storytelling where archives are treated as a pure material of fiction.

“La Grande Explication” is another project recently initiated by the French archive INA together with RTS in resonance with anniversary dates which appear to be the most rewarding strategy to drive audience. Dedicated for a youth target audience mainly active on Facebook, this 10 episodes web-series aims at deciphering ten major historical events, from Hiroshima bombing to Nelson Mandela election, while overlaying the archive clips with modern graphics such as text message bubbles inspired by the smartphone aesthetic in order to «dynamize and desacralize the archives ».

Yet, speaking about repackaging the archives using the technologies of today, a special mention needs to go out to 1968.DIGITAL, the first-ever mobile documentary series. Specially tailored for smartphone screens, this ongoing project takes up the challenge of revisiting the story of one heroic character per week through the lens of their iPhone and the various apps they could have owned in 1968; viewers witness the Beatles exchanging via a WhatsApp chat, Andy Warhol sharing photos on Instagram, Gabriel Garcia Marquez writing in Notes, and Martin Luther King’s funeral is announced via a Facebook’s event reminder.

Created and produced by Russian independent journalists and cofounders of Future History studio, Mikhail Zygar and Karen Shainyan, this project is the result of a prior effort to bring primary sources to the forefront with “Project1917“, a web-project relying on Facebook daily posting style to immerse the audience into the making of the Russian Revolution. In addition to providing a fresh experience of the past, Future History’s projects rely on a very specific mission statement: showing how major events shaped the culture and the society of nowadays while revealing patterns of similarities and clear influences between people across the world, both in the present and the past.

A social media phenomenon, “1968.DIGITAL(The Year that created the world as we know it) has so far reached millions of views thanks to a smart distribution strategy based on partnerships with different news media, maximizing the chance to disseminate the content across a wide variety of channels and platforms… and to multiply the views. The project was initially designed as a three-episode series untitled “Future History: 1968,” which was premiered by BuzzFeed News, the millennial-focused site, and it was released exclusively on Apple News before going to YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Soon additional news publishers have joined the project such as “Liberation.fr” for producing a French version of the series.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/AQmZSAbrLdM
All this is actually very representative of what’s going on today with news businesses: they are in a frenzy for original, fresh and higher-quality video content to license or produce, and especially for short docs aiming to recap historical moments while providing context to nowadays world Another great example is The New York Times ‘partnership with the news organization Retro Report, which has produced more than 125 short docs, combining investigative journalism and narrative storytelling to tell the audience the history behind the news.

A mix of digital creatives and journalists, all those highly-engaged creators  are not only working on adding a modern twist to archival storytelling but they are also giving a fresh and unprecedented access to history and archives to the youngest generations via unique video experiences delivered directly to their doors: in Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Mashable, BuzzFeed etc. What an exciting and optimistic time for archival storytelling.

Archive Researchers, Documentary Festivals, Rare footage

MIPDoc2018: Key takeaways from Archive Valley’s panel​ talk with James Hunt and Thorsten Pollfuss


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Archive Valley was thrilled to attend MIPDoc 2018. The event, dedicated to non-fiction programming, hosts 700 participants from over 50 countries—making it a perfect stage for Archive Valley to showcase our passion for archival footage and research. Our CEO Melanie Rozencwajg worked with an amazing team behind the event to organize and lead a panel discussion about the enormous potential of rare archives, and how they empower storytelling through unique global perspectives. The title of the panel was “Archives & Storytelling: Unearthing Unique Footage at a Global Scale.” 
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Documentary Festivals, Rare footage

SPOTLIGHT: 4 Archive-Driven Documentaries @ HotDocs2018


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We have prepared for you a short selection of films from this year’s edition of HotDocs that we expect to showcase some of the best work in the field of archive research in 2018. With the full line-up published, it was easy to spot the productions that rely on the meticulous research of both personal and external archive sources. Some of the productions will have their World/North American premieres making the festival a truly special moment for the filmmakers and researchers behind them. The selected films come from very different places, periods, each with a unique personal narrative making a great complete watching experience if you want to see all of them (something that we definitely will).

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