Age of Loneliness. Credit: Daniel Dewsbury.At first glance, they don't really have much in common. The Closer We Get is a first person documentary, where filmmaker Karen Guthrie uses a period of caring for her ailing mother to prod into her family's painful past. In 3 1/2 Minutes, 10 Bullets, director Marc Silver masterfully investigates one of the US's all too commonplace racially motivated killings. And in The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer follows up his groundbreaking multi-award winning The Act of Killing with a further journey through Indonesian killing fields, this time through the lens of a single traumatized family. But what these three disparate films do share is the fact that despite widespread acclaim, they have not found a place on British television. Instead they are all running as part of the Unorthodocs strand at Somerset House this winter. Curated by Dartmouth Film's Christopher Hird, a champion of independent feature docs, the films in the series collectively serve as an admonishment to UK broadcasters to up their game.
Much has been written about how we are in a golden age of documentary. Indeed, with many more potential avenues of distribution - along with the technological advances which give us all the opportunity to become filmmakers - the future looks bright for those determined to persevere in this difficult art form. But what is less "golden" about this age, is the fact that British broadcasters - still powerful and still in control of the best way to reach the masses -have largely turned their backs on commissioning single feature length documentaries.
I recently sat on the Grierson judging committee for Best Documentary on a Contemporary Theme - International. It was striking that very few of the outstanding films on our longlist were given television money up front. All too often broadcasters hedge their bets, forcing independent filmmakers down the difficult path of self-financing, and only deciding whether or not to pick up a film once it's been made.
