European Docmakers Call for More Collaboration, Transparency to Spur Burgeoning Documentary Industry
variety.comChristopher Vourlias Though it’s often been lauded as a golden age for documentary filmmaking, a host of challenges still face independent docmakers in Europe, who struggle with everything from dwindling budgets at public broadcasters to opaque funding decisions at streaming networks to convoluted legal frameworks for collaborating with international partners.The question of how the continent’s documentary community can come together to advocate for change was the subject of “Mapping the European Documentary: Toward a Pan-European Lobby,” a conversation hosted by the Thessaloniki Documentary Festival on March 14 in collaboration with the Documentary Association of Europe.Since 2020, DAE has been exploring the landscape of independent documentary filmmaking in Europe to facilitate “national associations thinking about the needs and the challenges of their producers and the ecosystems that they live and work in,” according to the association’s Selin Murat, who moderated the discussion.
The effort has focused on how various European countries and associations “can come together to lobby at a pan-European, and maybe even a world, level on the common challenges and the common wants and needs” of their industries, she added.Murat cited a number of key takeaways from an industry summit hosted by DAE in 2020, including an “overwhelming” desire for more collaboration between industries and national bodies, a need to establish best practices for the implementation of policies that could serve the European documentary community, a push to spur a paradigm shift for documentary production companies that are increasingly being squeezed out of the industry, and a need to amplify the work of national bodies to assist foreign producers.
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