special industry
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The Guardian’s Charlie Phillips at the Short Cuts to Future Industry talk on Monday photo: Bram Belloni
New platforms take off A bunch of “new kids on the block” are making increasing in-roads into the documentary commissioning scene traditionally dominated, in Europe at least, by broadcasters. By Melanie Goodfellow
A number of these relative newcomers took part in the Short Cuts to Future Industry talk on Monday. Among those on stage was former Sheffield Doc/Fest deputy director Charlie Phillips, who recently took up the new position of head of documentaries at The Guardian. “We want to get into stuff early, later than concept, we want to see some sort of research and some material, but we want to be there early in the process. People really can send me lots of ideas because at this early stage when we’re trying to work out what we’re doing, it’s useful,” said Phillips. Although not divulging the department’s exact budget, he said it wanted to commission 50 short film works a year to which it would offer between £5,000 to £15,000 depending on the project. He explained that in the first
“We want to get into stuff early” instance the new department was looking for short 10-minute preview extracts of upcoming documentaries, which could be put up on the newspaper’s burgeoning video platform. “If that ten-minute segment goes out and it’s really popular we are interested in working with longer docs so we might actually say to you we’re interested in working as co-producer on the longer doc and we want to put some money in,” explained Phillips. “That’s slightly down the line and it is something we’re looking for – a subject which is perfect for The Guardian audience, which is liberal and well-informed. We try to talk up the audience rather than down. I can’t show you
examples of what we want to work with because at the moment, nothing I’ve commissioned is online at the moment because it’s so new.” Instead, Phillips showed two current clips on its video page and YouTube page as a taster of The Guardian’s broad range of interest: The Slumgods of Mumbai and the spoof Serial: The backlash and the backlash against the backlash begins. Other speakers at Monday’s talk included: Jason Spingarn-Koff of The New York Times, Sjoerd Raaijmakers of the Dutch branch of Renegade Vice, respected filmmaker Jos de Putter, who lauched the platform de Correspondent, and Jigar Mehta of Al Jazeera’s youth-focused AJ+. De Putter explained the his crowd-funded, advertising-free platform aimed at high-brow, author driven content also featured a “video garden” for which he was seeking “urgent and personal” short form video stories. He explained how de Correspondent financed Dutch filmmaker Morgan Knibbe’s initial trip to the Italian island of Lampedusa – which formed the basis for his IDFA Feature-Length Documentary title Those Who Feel The Fire Burning, exploring the wave of immigrants trying to illegally enter Europe by the Mediterranean. Over at the Forum, meanwhile, another Norwegian newcomer web-TV channel VGTV made its pitching debut as one of the key backers of Benjamin Rae’s Magnus, about chess grandmaster Magnus Carlsen. “I am so excited be here. This is the crown jewel of our documentary projects. This is the first time we’re here – this is a big milestone for VGTV,” said Head of Aquisition Linn Aronsen. “To prove how much we believe in this project we’ve more into it than all our other documentaries combined.”
Takei doc(k)s at IDFA Star Trek’s George Takei has been in Amsterdam this week, accompanying new doc To Be Takei, which screened as part of IDFA’s Queer Day. By Geoffrey Macnab
Takei, who played Sulu is the long-running TV series, experienced extreme trauma in his childhood. As a five year old, he was interned alongside his family in the wake of Pearl Harbor. As a Japanese-American, they found themselves classified as “enemy non-aliens.”
Hysteria “It was hysteria, totally irrational,” Takei recalls of the events of early 1942 when he, his siblings and parents were taken away from their California home at gunpoint. “It wasn’t the West Coast of the US that was bombed. It was Hawaii that was bombed, but they didn’t intern the Japanese-Americans of Hawaii because they made up about 40% of the population and if they were extracted, the economy would have collapsed. No labour, no consumers – it would have been disastrous for the economy.”
Good man Takei’s grandfather was a farmer in the Sacramento Delta. He was forced to leave his land behind – and to trust in a neighbour (ironically a German immigrant) to look after it till he returned. “He was a good man, he gave it back!”
Campaigning Since he quit the Starship Enterprise, Takei has spent much of his time campaigning on social media and giving public talks in which he has drawn attention to the cruel and outrageous treatment of JapaneseAmericans during the World War II.
Takei has also worked on a musical inspired by his and his family’s grim experiences. Allegiance is now being readied for a Broadway premiere next year. The doc (which premiered in Sundance) was originally intended to end with the Broadway premiere – but that was delayed. “We opened with a world premiere at the San Diego Old Globe Theatre,” Takei recalls. “We opened to a sold-out house and it remained sold out throughout the run.” The run was extended by a week and the play went on to break the theatre’s 77-yearold record for box office and attendance.
Crazy uncle The Star Trek star is “life-long friends” with his fellow crew members from the Enterprise, even if his relationship with William Shatner (Captain Kirk) has its ups and downs. “In a family – and we’re a Star Trek family – you always have that crazy uncle – a member of the family but he is that crazy, eccentric Uncle Bill. We have to take him with a little grain of salt!”
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