Documentary Utopias: Rebuilding the UK Feature Doc Landscape Post-Pandemic

Name: Documentary Utopias: Rebuilding the UK Feature Doc Landscape Post-Pandemic
Start: 2020-06-25T11:00:00+01:00
End: 2020-06-25T12:30:00+01:00

Date: Thur 25 June

Time: 11.00am-12.30pm

Keeping it Real: Towards A Nonfiction Film Policy for the UK, the biggest ever survey of feature documentary producers and directors, is published here. The report has evidenced the dire state of the sector – under-funded, under-representative and often poorly understood by policymakers. The data in the report was collected before the advent of coronavirus, but the problems it identifies remain.

In this session, filmmakers and researchers from the UK Feature Docs project invite us to imagine what a radically different industry could look like and how we might get there.

Panellists include:

Dr Steve Presence is the lead investigator of UK Feature Docs and author of Keeping It Real: Towards a Documentary Film Policy for the UK. He is a Senior Lecturer in Film Studies in the Department of Arts and Cultural Industries at the University of the West of England (UWE Bristol). Most of his research focuses on UK film and television history, culture and policy.

Lindsey Dryden is an internationally acclaimed, Emmy®-winning, film director and producer who started out in TV documentary (Channel 4, BBC, History Channel) before moving into independent cinema. She has produced shorts and features that have won at Sundance (Unrest, 2017, dir: Jennifer Brea) and the Emmy’s and Webby’s (Trans In America, 2018, dir: Daresha Kyi), and directed short and feature documentaries (Lost and Sound, SXSW, 2012). A proud founding member of Queer Producers Network and FWD-Doc (Filmmakers With Disabilities), her work has been released theatrically, shortlisted for Oscar nomination, and broadcast on Netflix, PBS, BBC and others.

Eloise King is an award-winning filmmaker, who has focused her career on telling powerful human-interest stories foregrounding marginalized voices. As a former Global Executive Producer at VICE, overseeing the brand’s digital channels in the UK and i-D’s globally, Eloise explored fashion, youth cultures, and social justice. Her projects have generated over 100 million views and have crossed digital and major terrestrial platforms, including BBC, Channel 4, ITV, MTV, A&E, and Al Jazeera English. Her previous titles, as a director and/or producer, include: The Gatherings (C4 – Nominated for a Grierson Award), Kids Behind Bars (ITV), Call the Mediator (BBC), Acid Attacks (VICE), JME x Corbyn, Fire Games of Napoli, and the Gurls Talk series with Adwoa Aboaheries with Adwoa Aboah.

Paul Sng is a British Chinese documentary filmmaker and writer whose work is designed to amplify the voices of people who are rarely heard in the arts and media. In 2015, he founded Velvet Joy Productions to produce films about people who challenge the status quo, by working in a collaborative way to capture extraordinary aspects of everyday life. Paul’s documentaries have been broadcast on national television and screened internationally and include: Sleaford Mods – Invisible Britain (2015), Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle (2017), Social Housing, Social Cleansing (2018) and the forthcoming Poly Styrene: I Am A Cliché (2021). His first book, Invisible Britain: Portraits of Hope and Resilience, was published in November 2018.

Rachel Wexler has been working in film and television for 30 years and specialises in producing and executive producing ambitious documentary projects for a worldwide audience. She has worked on 15 films for BBC Storyville to date, collaborated with many award-winning film-makers and been successful in raising a significant amount of finance from broadcasters and platforms worldwide, equity partners, foundations and crowdfunding. Rachel runs Bungalow Town Productions with her partner Jez Lewis. As well as producing films, Rachel has devised and delivered two training schemes for emerging producers. Interdoc, set up with Initialize Films in 2006, which ran for several years along with the Scottish Documentary Institute. And, from 2014, Future Producer School: A six month training scheme for UK-based emerging producers, the scheme has partnered with Sheffield Doc/Fest (among others) for the past five years and trained 75 producers who are all part of a thriving alumni network.

The session will be hosted by Mia Bays: Mia Bays is an Oscar winning and twice BAFTA nominated creative producer. Prior to producing, Mia worked in some of the top sales, marketing, distribution and exhibition companies in the UK, across both documentary and fiction. In 2016 Mia took over Birds’ Eye View pivoting it from being a film festival about to close into a year-round charity – running the Reclaim the Frame exhibition project (a mission to bring ever-greater audiences to films by women) and Future Leaders in Distribution, a leadership training programme for women with 7+ years of film distribution experience. Alongside this, Mia also produces Sundance London.

To register, visit the Sheffield Doc/Fest website here.