{spotlight} feature reports

Journalism and Documentaries
Discovery Campus master school Open training session
Belfast 9 - 11 March 2007

With kind support from GFO, Autonomi attended the first Open Training Session at the Discovery Campus Masterschool 2007 programme. Entitled Journalism and Documentaries and attended by commissioners and independent producers from all over Europe, the symposium was a good overview of the current state documentary across all genres. Also it was a great networking event and we had chats with both C4 and BBC commissioners as well as forming new links with potential co-producers from both Britain, Denmark and Germany.

In a TV world obsessed and saturated by news and current affairs, it was generally agreed that there is a place for and necessity of upkeeping the impact of political and investigative documentary work. A large number of compelling, disturbing and provocative documentaries that have been shown recently in cinemas and on TV were discussed to great extent, and Paul Watson's Rain in my Heart, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, Sean Langan's Meeting the Taliban, The Yes Men's The Yes Men, Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, Kevin Sim's Once Upon a Time in Iran, Peter Kosminsky/ David Aukin's dramas The Government Inspector and The Hamburg Cell were all scrutinised and then held up to the more mundane end of the schedule occupied by the Wife Swaps and Supper Skinny Mes...

The sessions were largely all shaped as forums for debate where all had an opportunity to chip in with comments and ask the panellists in-depth of where they're coming from and, more importantly, going.

However, Paul Watson, the creator of fly-on-the-wall The Family and subsequently notorious for always making a massive impact with his films, was as always the one to stir things up when he pronounced the BBC's documentary commissioner, Richard Klein's take on the genre 'crowd-pleasing' and 'totally unacceptable'. He kept the debate lively, and often applauded by the audience, thundered against the lazy commissioning suits that 'you cannot predict the future, so why keep telling us you want a beginning, a middle and an end! Life is not like that' etc, etc. Instead he showcased his wonderfully raw Rain in My Heart about alcoholism (BBC2) as an example of how to use a near orchestral approach to filmmaking, by way of repeating themes and not compromising on impact.
Beautifully done, like most of what he said, was music to our ears.

Participating experts included:

David Aukin Managing Director, Daybreak Pictures, Part of the Mentorn Group, London , UK
Andy Bichlbaum,Mike Bonanno Yes Men - Filmmaker, , New York , USA
Michael Christoffersen Director/Producer, Team Productions, Copenhagen , Denmark
Eamon Hardy Head of Independent Commissioning (CA), BBC, London , UK
Alan Hayling Editorial Director, Renegade Pictures UK , London , UK
Richard Klein MD Renegade Pictures, London , UK
Sean Langan Documentary Filmmaker, , London , UK
Angus Macqueen Head of Documentaries, Channel 4, London , UK
Stephen Segaller Director of News and Public Affairs Programming, Thirteen/ WNET , NY , USA
Paul Watson Documentary Filmmaker, , Tonbridge , Kent , UK
Diane Weyermann Executive Vice President, Documentary Division, Participant Productions, USA

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