Who Wants to Fund a Documentary?
Scenes from the money chase behind the film festivals
by Thom Powers - February 9, 2003

LAST MONTH'S SUNDANCE film festival won so much acclaim for its nonfiction entries that even a debt-ridden documentary-maker like me could find cause for optimism. Andrew Jarecki's "Capturing the Friedmans" (about a troubled Long Island family), Carlos Bosch and Josep Maria Domenech's "Balseros" (about Cuban refugees), and Jose Padilha's "Bus 174" (about a recent hijacking in Sao Paolo) generated as much excitement as any fiction film.

But festival-goers might have noticed an unsettling trend in the strong documentary lineup: Although many of the filmmakers in the festival's World Documentary competition worked outside their own countries, Americans overwhelmingly made documentaries about Americans. Of the 16 American documentariesin competition, only one, Elaine Epstein's "State of Denial," about AIDS in South Africa, focused elsewhere.

During a Sundance panel discussion, BBC programmer Nick Fraser was asked if he was being deluged with American proposals related to the threatened war against Iraq. "Not one," he replied.

To get a better perspective on the worldwide culture of documentary filmmaking, one must travel to the International Documentary Filmfestival Amsterdam (IDFA, pronounced "id-fa")-the largest event of its kind in the world. For 10 days each November, from morning to midnight, nonfiction films are screened at several theaters in the heart of Amsterdam; this year, some 97,000 spectators showed up.

Ten years ago, the festival's organizers decided that screening documentaries wasn't enough. Because it's difficult for documentary filmmakers to finance new work, IDFA started a remarkable, nerve-wracking, and sometimes surreal three-day event called the Forum for International Co-financing of Documentaries.

Set in Amsterdam's Paradiso music hall, the forum is like a UN meeting crossed with an episode of "The Weakest Link." At this past year's event, influential programmers from TV stations around the world sat in judgment on 44 teams of documentary filmmakers from 22 countries. Each team had seven minutes to pitch a project, sometimes enhancing their presentation with sample video footage. More than 100 other doc-makers, like me, bought an observer's pass-to watch the spectacle, and to rub elbows with programmers.

The range of projects was wide. The Irish filmmaking team pitching "Hugo Chavez" had rare access to the Venezuelan president during last year's coup attempt. "He Who Remains: The Diaries of Victor Klemperer" is a French production company's attempt to bring to life the wartime journals of a German Jew trapped in Hitler's Reich. In "Conquistadors of Cuba," a Finnish director will explore Cuban history through the colorful history of three old cars.

When each seven-minute pitch is up, the grilling begins: How will changing events affect the Chavez film? How will "Conquistadors of Cuba" differ from a recently completed film on a similar subject, "Yank Tanks"? The judges are as rigorous as any banker in probing for signs of a bad investment. The strongest pitches come away with a fully funded film, or at least partial interest. The weakest wind up with nothing at all.

These days, it takes a global village to raise a budget. And the marketplace in ideas is as brutal as any other.

On Day 1 of the most recent forum, the Israeli filmmakers Adi Barash and Ruthie Shatz take their seats to pitch a work-in-progress called "Garden." Barash, 32, and Shatz, 29, have gone through this before; they raised $160,000 for their first, award-winning film "Diamonds and Rust" (about a diamond mining boat in Namibia) by pitching at an Israeli forum modeled on the Amsterdam event. But raising money isn't much easier the second time around.

"Garden" follows young male prostitutes who congregate in an area of Tel Aviv known as "the electricity garden" because of the nearby National Electric Company. As the lights dim inside the music hall, sample footage appears on giant overhead screens.

The three main characters-a teenage Palestinian hustler, a Russian Jewish immigrant, and a cross-dressing Arab Israeli whose family forced him to marry-are introduced in cinema verite scenes. The Palestinian youth describes how he lived on the street until an older Israeli client rented him an apartment; when the boy is evicted because of his nationality, he gets drunk and becomes distraught. "In Nablus they can give me a bomb," he says. "I've had enough of this place." English subtitles translate the Hebrew and Arabic dialogue.

When the clip ends, the audience breaks into applause. Now it's the job of moderator Steven Seidenberg to survey the panel of programmers for interest. As a longtime broker for international co-productions, with credits on "A Brief History of Time" (directed by the Cambridge-based documentarian Errol Morris), the jovial Seidenberg is more adept than the average filmmaker at wringing money out of programmers. With $66,000 already in place, "Garden" needs another $197,000 to make its budget. When investing in co-productions, big American channels might spend up to $100,000 or more. English, French, and German channels might pay $35,000-75,000 apiece. South Africa, Australia, and countries in Scandinavia, among others, might be good for $5,000-10,000.

"I'd be very interested," says the BBC's Nick Fraser. He has 55 slots to fill every year for "Storyville," a series that specializes in independent long-form documentaries. Fraser doesn't mince words about his tastes. "I really liked 'Diamonds and Rust.' It was a great festival film, but not quite tightly enough edited for my purposes. So I hope you can make this film a bit tighter-dare I say television-y."

Fraser has another criticism: The title stinks. "Can we change the title? 'Garden' sounds like a perfume garden."

Seidenberg turns to Lisa Heller of HBO. Her boss, Sheila Nevins, has deep pockets for nonfiction films and roughly 40 slots to fill at HBO and its sibling station Cinemax. Nevins, one of the most powerful figures in the American documentary world, has a reputation for balancing salacious fare like "Cathouse" with socially conscious award-winners like "The Carpet Slaves: Stolen Children of India." Subtitles may be a problem, Heller says, "but prostitution, for better or worse, does very well for HBO." The audience titters. Heller can't commit yet, but she requests to see a rough cut of the film later.

Sex may sell on cable, but what about on PBS? Public television is one of the few American outlets willing to touch international subjects. Tom Koch of Boston's WGBH says that the harsh language of "Garden" might not go over so well with the station's "65-year-old donors." He suggests PBS's "FRONTLINE/World," a program dedicated to international current events-but it could only offer a 30-minute slot.

Commissioning editors from France, Finland, and Denmark all pledge their support. Negotiations over exact amounts will come later in private. Seidenberg turns to Peter Dale of England's Channel 4 to see if he can goose some competition with the BBC. Dale likes what he sees, but he admits that Channel 4 "isn't really interested in anything international these days." Although Channel 4 was once renowned for its world coverage, competition from cable has led to a greater focus on ratings.

"But you are interested in sex," says Seidenberg.

True, Dale acknowledges. In 2002 alone, Channel 4 aired "The Truth About Gay Sex," "The Truth about Lesbian Sex," and "The Truth About Gay Animals."

"So," says Dale, "if you call it something like 'The Truth about Middle-Eastern Gay Sex,' that could work for me."

"Garden" fell short of achieving its total budget, according to my calculations. But it succeeded in stirring interest. It could have done worse.

If it weren't for the connections he'd made at IDFA's pitch forum, the American director Eugene Jarecki might never have made "The Trials of Henry Kissinger," a study of the diplomat as war criminal that no American funders would touch. (The BBC-funded documentary, which has played widely in theaters, will kick off the Sundance Channel's new Monday "DOCdays" series on March 3.)

Jarecki, 32, returned to IDFA this November to pitch his next project, a "personal exploration" of the Eisenhower legacy called "I Like Ike." (Jarecki told me that his mom had encouraged him to make a feel-good film after taking on Kissinger.) Jarecki's pitch and his 3-minute sample reel of artfully edited archival footage were a hit with the programmers. By the end of their feedback, his new film seemed well on its way toward meeting the rather large $600,000 budget.

Another American who came to Amsterdam was Joe Berlinger, the New York-based co-director of the 1992 film "Brother's Keeper," about an illiterate dairy farmer accused of killing one of his brothers, and the 1996 film "Paradise Lost," about two teens accused of murdering a younger boy. Crime pays for Berlinger-HBO ponied up $1.1 million for "Paradise Lost." But these days, he says, "it's really hard to get that kind of money."

Now he's hoping to move beyond American killings to broader European territory. His next project, "Gray Matter," investigates the case of Heinrich Gross, a leading Austrian physician who oversaw the Nazi euthanasia program during World War II. After the war, the research he conducted on the preserved brains of hundreds of murdered children won him a national medal. Today, the 86-year-old doctor has been judged incompetent to stand trial for his crimes.

Berlinger missed IDFA's application deadline, so he bought an observer's pass in order to network with programmers in the lounge. With Emmy and Peabody awards to his credit, Berlinger already has credentials equivalent to a Pulitzer Prize-winning author, but you won't see David McCullough or John McPhee pitching to publishers at the Frankfurt Book Fair. Berlinger, who used to work at the ad agency Ogilvy & Mather, doesn't mind the money-grubbing game. "A lot of filmmakers don't want to wear that hat, but 25 percent of the job is to sell the film. Then you have to make a good film."

At IDFA, the losers outnumber the winners.

When I see the title "Three Women Singers, Pioneers of the Feminine Condition," I predict a pitch long on good intentions and short on good storytelling. Egyptian producer Marianne Khoury presents the project about Oum Kalthoum and two other women singers from Egypt. Kalthoum's records sell over 600,000 copies a year and are played in every falafel shop in the world. But none of the programmers seem to spend much time in falafel shops.

Fraser cuts to the chase. "We know nothing about this music," he says. "We know nothing about Egypt. We know nothing about the history. So you've got this triple whammy of ignorance." He urges her to rethink the whole film, to be "much less elusive, much less highbrow, and much more structured."

Another pitch, "Don't F*** with Me, I've Got 52 Brothers and Sisters," sounds more intriguing. The young South African director Dumisani Phakathi begins telling his own story. Growing up, he hardly knew his Zulu father. He heard rumors that his father played with poisonous snakes, carried a gun, hung out with the music group Ladysmith Black Mambazo, and managed the Amazulu football team. When his father died, Phakathi discovered that he was one of 53 offspring by several mothers. He plans to use the film to examine his father's mysterious past and his own newfound kin.

The programmers are enthralled by Phakathi's natural storytelling ability. The modest $120,000 budget seems guaranteed.

After a day of listening to 15 pitches-Colombian kidnapping victims, Eastern European child traffickers, Cambodian refugees-my own internationalism starts to waver. Glancing at the program, I see that the next pitch is a Bulgarian film called "Georgi and the Butterflies." I can barely follow the broken English of the written synopsis. The last sentence reads: "Compassion, business, butterflies." I decide it's safe to skip out.

But at a cocktail party later that night, everyone keeps asking me if I saw the Bulgarians' pitch. Eventually I caught up with director Andrey Paounov, 28, and his producer Martichka Bozhilova, 29. They're dressed in the thrift-store style of record store clerks. Quiet is my first impression of them; persistent is the second. Paounov tells me he has been trying to make this film-about a Bulgarian mental asylum-for seven years. When he pitched the same idea a year and a half ago at the Film Arts Foundation in San Francisco, he was told the project was impossible to fund-too obscure, too unconventional, too... Bulgarian.

In the fall of 2002, Bulgaria passed new regulations requiring permission to shoot in state-run institu tions. Paounov got the approval only three days before traveling to IDFA, a journey the filmmakers were only able to afford thanks to a donated ticket from the Dutch Embassy in Sofia.

In his pitch, spectators told me, Paounov used a humorous slide show to describe the bizarre business schemes of psychiatrist Dr. Georgi Lulchev. As head of the asylum, Lulchev is trying to keep his madhouse financially afloat with plans to raise ostriches, beavers, and silk-producing worms that turn into butterflies.

When Paounov finished his pitch, Channel 4's Peter Dale took the microphone. This could be one of the worst documentaries ever made, Dale said. On the other hand, the pitch was quite original and the film could be wonderful. Paounov was only asking for $60,000. Dale pledged $10,000 and vowed not to leave the table until other broadcasters made up the difference. WGBH's Koch matched him. Programmers from Germany, Denmark, Canada and Scandinavia filled the gap.

Dale, who receives 500 to 1000 proposals a month and funds only 200 a year, explained his behavior to me as "temporary Tourette's." It was the kind of unpredictable moment that documentary-makers spend their lives trying to catch on film. Compassion, business, butterflies.

Thom Powers is the co-owner of Sugar Pictures. His latest documentary, "Guns & Mothers," will debut on PBS's Independent Lens on May 13. He is currently writing a history of American documentary entitled, "Stranger than Fiction."

Minor copy-editing changes have been made to the above text since the story first ran on page D2 of the Boston Globe on 2/9/2003.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.