How Toronto Documentaries Use Innovative Methods to Reach New Audiences: ‘You Need a Different Lens’
variety.comGregg Goldstein Documentaries have flooded streaming services and arthouse theaters for years, with good reason: They’re usually the most inexpensive indie films to produce and can spark cultural conversations that attract big audiences.
But with so many to choose from, how can filmmakers set theirs apart from the pack? In Toronto, directors are taking some unconventional approaches: inserting new theatrical scenes to present unfilmable histories, capturing mind-bending aerial stunts that go far beyond typical doc photography, using aural techniques that duplicate protagonists’ experiences and even bringing doc elements into other genres. “Unquestionably, we’re living in a world of much more nonfiction filmmaking and engagement from audiences than 10 years ago,” says TIFF’s documentary programmer Thom Powers. “And with that increase comes a different set of challenges, as audiences become familiar with certain visual styles of documentary-making.
If you want to shake them up and get them to look at something with fresh eyes, you need to have a different lens.” One example Powers cites is “Patrice: The Movie,” Ted Passon’s “documentary rom-com” about a disabled woman and her fight to get married without losing disability benefits she needs to survive.
The protagonist, Patrice Jetter, designed sets to play herself in re-created scenes from her life with child actors. “Patrice has a million stories from her life, and there’s so much she went through that shapes how she sees the world now,” Passon says. “She’s been working on a graphic novel and doing drawings from her life, and she had a public access kids television show.
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