DocNZ: changing the world with documentary
by: Keith Barclay

Screen Hub
Monday 2 March, 2009

Films that change lives - two very different approaches from New York-based Sandi DuBowski and Auckland-based Qiujing Wong. With a few notes about reality, the internet, and the soothing power of a cup of tea.

DuBowski and Wong work in very different worlds, not just in the subject-matter they address, but very different funding environments. In the US, there's little public subsidy for the Arts. (One could argue that's the case in NZ too, but that's not the point.)

The US has many foundations and philanthropists who support the Arts generally and film-making specifically. During his career, Sandi's successfully tapped almost forty of them for the money to get films made and then ensure that they have a productive life.

Trembling Before G-d, (G-d being the big guy, but written acknowledging the Jewish practise of not writing H-s name), won awards at seven international festivals. It's about the struggle of gay Orthodox Jews face, reconciling their sexuality with their faith, a faith that rejects homosexuality and believes it can be 'cured'.

The film made a profit, and continues to generate income seven years after its release. In those commercial marketing terms it was, therefore, successful.

However, those successes are only a part of the picture. Sandi worked with his distributor, New Yorker Films (which sadly went to the wall on Tuesday, the day Sandi was making his presentation at DocNZ) to devise a marketing and release plan designed to maximise the film's impact.

Touring with the film, Sandi attended over eight hundred screenings following the initial release, speaking and engaging with groups of gay Jews in formal and informal settings. He also created a website encouraging people to contribute and blog about their experiences.

As a result of the experience of touring with the film, and - to be fair - its financial success, New Yorker Films funded the production of an accompanying documentary about the documentary, Trembling on the Road.

Sandi's film is very much aimed at encouraging dialogue, particularly within Orthodox Jewish communities, about their attitudes around homosexuality. Another strategy was to develop Trembling parties, to be held at the time of Jewish religious festivals, particularly Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), the final day of the ten days of repentance, when Jews try to seek forgiveness for wrongs done against God and fellow humans.

The parties involved a screening and discussion, could be hosted publicly or privately, and public ones were advertised through the website.

Sandi claims that as the person who best knows the material and community surrounding a film, the film-maker is the best person to market it. In dealing with strong established communities, where networks and therefore points of entry and engagement are obvious, Sandi's model is successful.

He maintains a database of over 10,000 names for emailing news, information, requests for funding for future projects, and soon. He does acknowledge that he can't do everything, and no longer continues much personal involvement with the website. He advocates using a content manager, to support and serve the community that grows around a film and its issues. Again, there's cost associated with all of this, so it's back to identifying what technologies will suit a project's needs and best engage with its community and prospective audience.

Sandi's time is now devoted to other projects, including being producer of Jihad for Love, which examines the experiences of gay and lesbian of Muslims.

By contrast, Qiujing Wong works in a country, this one, where there's very little philanthropic giving – at least at the level required to make films – and much of funding comes from the state, yet can be triggered only by passing the domestic content test.

It's not a lot of help in funding a project such as A Grandmother's Tribe, her film about the effects of Aids in Africa. Qiujing's company, received an initial grant from AMP's scholarship fund, which enabled them to kick-start fund-raising to make the film.

An email appeal to an existing database of 3-400 people generated additional word of mouth and managed to raise sufficient funds to make the film, predominantly from private sources and individuals in the US and Canada.

The marketing to support the film was mostly undertaken in-house, including website content, regular email updates to the expanding database. Distribution was handled by the company.

To date events around the film, including a gala launch in Canada, have raised in excess of CA$100,000. Partnerships have been formed with Voiceless Children and the Stephen Lewis Foundation to ensure that money raised goes where it's intended to, and that money continues to be raised for the cause without it need full-time attention from Qiujing and Borderless.

One of the spin-offs of the project is that as a result of seeing the film and gaining an appreciation of the value of the work of film-makers in making change in people's lives, an investor put his hand up to fully fund Quijing's next project. So karma works. Do good things for others and good things will be done for you.

Without exploiting internet technology, both Sandi and Qiujing were able to make films that have had positive effects on the lives of others more easily than they would have been able to otherwise.

I'm happy they can exploit those technologies for good, rather than to serve ads for things that don't interest me. I'm happy that there are people like Wendy Levy who work tirelessly to develop the next generations of those applications and tools.

Pat Ferns, facilitating the session on Convergence, spoke about the 21st century not being a time of mass media, but of media everywhere and the ability to harness those possibilities to get past the gatekeepers of the traditional routes to market.

There was much talk of participatory and collaborative technologies, democratization, 360 degree commissioning, shifting, time compression, technologies and applications trending in and out.

Both the film-makers mentioned above found ways to use those technologies to make real world contacts. Both will do things differently on subsequent projects, because they're experienced and because technology will offer new opportunities for engagement, be it with prospective funders, colleagues, audiences or communities.

I quite like the real world, where I can look into someone's eyes and decide whether I believe what they're saying and read all the other cues that accompany speech, someone's tone, body language.

That's the joy of events like DocNZ, seeing people who are committed to what they do and can speak intelligently and passionately – even if you can't understand all the jargon – to inspire you about their work, be they film-makers or tech-developers or people who create avatar games to promote a film about refugees.

Even if I don't understand or appreciate it, I like it that I can look Wendy Levy in the eye and know that she knows what she's talking about, and that she's passionate about using technology to get real people to engage with important issues in the real world.

If you're up for some high-powered mentoring on maximising the effect of a film through use of these technologies, check out the opportunities here.
They have a very flash website, befitting their capabilities. If you live in New Zealand, you might want to make a real world cup of tea while it loads.

Keith Barclay
Our New Zealand editor, Keith Barclay, can be contacted on 021 400 102

editor@screenhub.co.nz

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