Doc Distro Lit Review: Documentary

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Journalists Mia Galuppo and Katie Kilkenny explore the transformation of the nonfiction space into a lucrative industry with streaming platforms, featuring insights from filmmakers like Alex Gibney and Ken Burns on rising costs, ethical challenges, and the evolving nature of their profession.
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Freemantle's global head of documenaries, Mandy Chang, spoke at at the Copenhagen Intl. Documentary Film Festival (CPH: DOX), about how streaming platforms stick with true crime, sport, and celebrity-driven stories so that they become mainstream and popular, essentially locking out opportunities for other, perhaps viewed as "challenging," documentaries.
A three-year study of the UK feature-length documentary film industry, the UK Feature Docs project disseminated findings through conferences, events, and publications, including "Keeping It Real: Towards a Documentary Film Policy for the UK" and "Making It Real: A Policy Programme for UK Documentary Film"—as well as the formation of the Documentary Film Council (DFC).
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Calling for a reimagining of the documentary film industry, cultural strategist Sonya Childress details inequities and issues found throughout the system, focusing on the areas of authorship, accountability, and ownership.
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Filmmaker Peter Stuart reflects on his time as President of the International Documentary Association (IDA), emphasizing collaborations with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), efforts to improve the documentary award nomination process, and expressing concerns about challenges faced by today's television documentary makers.
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In 2001, the Independent Television Service (ITVS) was a decade into supporting independent TV creators, and navigating challenges like funding risks and criticism for constraints, while staying committed to thought-provoking programming beyond traditional documentary roles.