AIDC 2010: snakes, angels and sustainable visions
by: David Tiley

Screen Hub
Wednesday 24 February, 2010

AIDC 2010 formally opened at the Hawke Centre in the University of South Australia, an elegant gallery space with an elegant lecture theatre full of elegant documentary tragics with a sound system that might have worked for a ventriloquist suspended from a crane.

Joost den Hartog, festival director, kicked off to some affectionate applause. He tried to curl around the mike to seduce it into action. Auntie Josie gave the traditional welcome, and made us laugh so much the sound system worked. Co-chairs Helen Leake and Trevor Graham confused it with an attack from both sides, which worked well enough for us to hear clearly that this is our conference and national and seeks to bring the sector together.

Kim Dalton, head of television at the ABC, usually good for a provocation or two, contented himself with laying out the unspectacular agendas that underly the festival.

“… maintain a focus on those policy and regulatory mechanisms that have been used to support our industry.. asking are those mechanisms the right ones and are they targeted appropriately? … are we happy with static levels of funding..”

There is the bleak truth: while the producer offset is, from the ABC’s point of view at least, “a useful support measure” in need of modification for documentary, direct funding is “static if not declining.” The ABC’s documentary investment needle has been stuck for three years, and Screen Australia’s is sliding relentlessly down the dial.

“However,” said Dalton, “audience expectations and thus budget pressures are rising year on year. As you are all too aware, to achieve the same budgets this year as you had five years ago, means more presales or more partners or investors.”

Tom Zubrycki then formally received the Stanley Hawes Award, set up originally by the now defunct Film Australia and rescued by the AIDC. It now comes with a cash prize and an obligation to deliver an address which is provocative, speaks for the rest of us, and anchored in long experience.

Tom is diffident in public – almost a requirement for observational filmmakers – and the microphone remained recalcitrant, so there was no risk he was going to overwhelm the audience with a revolutionary call to action.

His early story sounds like ancient history. If the renewal process for the sector is working, many in the audience will have no idea what he meant by newsreel theatre or Sony Portapak, Arris or Eclairs, though he stayed away from trim bins and crystal sync.

As he rose to a quiet crescendo, he called for sustainability and linked it not to companies but to emerging filmmakers, the role of government agencies, and the need for half hour slots for new visions.

He called for feature documentary slots, and to treat key local documentaries as the ABC has recently run feature films like Samson & Delilah. And for funders to accept films that reflect our curiosity about the wider world.

And then he turned to the increasing narrowness of television:

"None of us expected, however, as the years wore on that the ABC and SBS would gradually set the agenda for the documentary sector as a whole, and leave us filmmakers with fewer and fewer options to get our films commissioned. This is still the case despite the entrance of new pay channels like National Geo. Don’t get me wrong. We are pleased that public broadcasters are commissioning our ideas, but is this concentration of decision-making in a handful of people necessarily good for the industry, for diversity?

It’s my impression the ABC and SBS documentary slots are becoming more and more proscribed and rigid. Programs are tending to be format-driven, and lighter in content. Please understand that I’m not against entertainment per se, but I prefer entertainment with substance. I also feel that the range of subjects, viewpoints, and ideas is becoming narrower, while styles like the creative authored documentary and the character-driven social documentary are almost becoming extinct.

It’s here, I believe, that agencies like Screen Australia have a vital role to play. We must argue not only to safeguard , but dramatically expand the Special Documentary Fund. Without the support of this Fund it’s not impossible, but certainly extremely difficult, to produce documentary work unconstrained by the imperatives of the broadcasters. In an ironic twist many films that receive support through this ‘back door’ end up being sold back to the broadcasters that rejected them in the first place."

Finally, he called for documentary filmmakers to remain active in the debate through guilds and associations.

As Trevor Graham said later, the combination of speeches was very important, cutting from the experience of the broadcaster to the long term director. From both sides, the message is ultimately the same: what matters is policy, and policy work.

Led in a huge interrupted gaggle we were taken through the buzzing Adelaide streets, alive with the sense of festival and fringe, to a bar. We fought to understand each other, peered at badges, ignored wandering performers, retreated to the street, gargled beer in the heat.

Down the stairs came angels, who danced and flashed and bowed. Later, there was a snake, lithe and shining and inert. Next morning, over coffee, documentary filmmakers argued whether it was real, or not.

David Tiley
David Tiley is the editor of Screenhub, and can be contacted at editor@screenhub.com.au. or 03 9690 6893.

editor@screenhub.com.au
http://www.screenhub.com.au

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