Indie distributors discuss 'State of Theatrical' at DOC NYC

By Sarah Sluis

One thing quickly became clear at yesterday's "State of Theatrical" panel at DOC NYC. It's impossible to talk about theatrical releases today without also talking about digital. Even with a digital panel occurring directly after the theatrical discussion, talk of VOD, Netflix, Hulu, and upstarts like Constellation were used as reference and comparison points.

No one seemed ready to give up on theatrical in the panel, which included Mark Boxer from IFC, Emily Russo from Zeitgeist, Matt Cowal from Magnolia and Ryan Krivoshey from Cinema Guild. Russo noted several times throughout the discussion that Zeitgeist does not view theatrical as a loss leader for later television or DVD sales, as many in the industry do. Their small company, which releases just 5-6 titles a year, has to try to make money on each movie. It's about "managing expectations," she says, doing "what we feel we can spend to support" a release. Boxer also noted that spends can always be expanded later in the game, citing Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work as an example. IFC expected the documentary to do $1 million. It ended up brining in $3 million, and more support was given to the film as it exceeded expectations.

Documentaries just don't earn as much as feature films, so what constitutes success in the documentary market? It turns out, more are successful than you think. Russo stated that half-million is a great number for a documentary to receive on the theatrical market, and everyone else on the panel agreed. Zeitgeist's third-highest grossing movie ever, Bill Cunningham New York is still playing at the IFC Center where the discussion was held. It's been out 33 weeks. Russo attributed the movie's $1.5 million take to date to the "humanism" of Cunningham's character, and the fact that it showcased New York, New Yorkers, and lovers of fashion--the last a particularly easy-to-reach group online.

Bad reviews are the Achilles' heel for small docs that rely on positive critical response, but even worse is no review. The group talked about how they "die a little inside" every time a small town's film critic is laid off. When that happens, the paper will often reprint a review from another paper--most often The New York Times. For Magnolia's release Page One: Inside the New York Times, which was trashed by both that paper and the Los Angeles Times, that proved to be damaging. Cowal said they were able to get many other papers to run reprints of reviews besides the Times' for Page One, but a good review from the Times could have turned so-so business in the Big Apple into a blockbuster release.

Concurrent VOD/theatrical releaes are becoming more common. IFC does simultaneous VOD and theatrical releases for certain titles. Magnolia selects some releases to be available on VOD and iTunes one month before their theatrical release. When a documentary is only available in New York City anyway, this allows more viewers easy access to the title. It also provides lots of free advertising from cable companies and iTunes. The IFC and Magnolia reps talked about how titles that are "currently in theatres" or doing "pre-theatrical runs" get favorable placement and often free ads on the cable company's barker channel simply because they are using such a window. On the flip side, Boxer noted that they did not do simultaneous VOD for Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Buck because big theatre chains will not touch those movies if they're already on-demand. In general, Boxer felt that the big chains were more than willing to work with IFC. Since Cave of Forgotten Dreams was in 3D, Boxer's team had to ask a lot of theatres to give up a screen reserved for Justin Bieber: Never Say Never.

When it comes to simultaneous VOD/theatrical releases, these small distributors are the vanguard. Boxer cited the recent, failed attempt to release Tower Heist on VOD shortly after its release as an example of studios unable to do what these tiny distributors are already doing regularly. Though that failed due to pushback from major exhibitors, "in the future, they'll be in that space," Boxer said confidently. For many exhibitors, though, that reality is their worst fear.

DOC NYC continues through Nov. 10. Check the schedule of events here.

'The Island President' comes to DOC NYC

By Sarah Sluis

This year's DOC NYC lineup includes The Island President, which won the People's Choice Documentary Award at the Toronto Film Festival. Audiences were undoubtedly charmed into casting their vote not just because of the film itself, but the charisma of the documentary's subject, the president of the Maldives.

President Mohamed Nasheed was imprisoned and tortured multiple times by the previous, dictatorial regime before being elected in the first fair election in thirty years. When he assumed office, he focused on the island nation's most pressing issue: Staying above water. The Maldives, which has a population of just under a million and takes a few hours to reach--by plane!--from India, has over 2,000 islands, many just above sea level. The citizens' constant struggle with erosion became a pressing political issue after the 2004 tsunami devastated entire islands in the archipelago, which had to be abandoned. Then the former president misappropriated over $100 million in aid in the aftermath of the natural disaster. The islands' erosion problems signify global warming. If carbon dioxide levels in the air continue to rise, the Maldives will be underwater in less than a century, a sort of canary-in-the-coal-mine for the problems that will be unleashed by global warming.

Director Jon Shenk (Lost Boys of Sudan) has remarkable access to the inner workings of the president's regime. The audience is privy to the kind of compromises, drudgery, and deal-making required of a politician, and its close trail of its subject hearkens back to 1960's documentary classic Primary. President Nasheed shows he's game to unusual PR tactics like holding a conference underwater in SCUBA gear in order to bring attention to his country's plight, so it's easy to understand why he would welcome a filmmaker's cameras.

Shenk chooses the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit as the movie's climax. Nasheed ends up being a bridge between the developed and developing countries. The biggest carbon emitters, such as the U.S. and Europe, want everyone to reduce carbon emissions, while developing nations such as India and China argue they use just a fraction of the carbon of these rich nations and need to increase carbon emissions as their nation grows. The Maldives, as a small developing nation, offers a compelling argument for developing nations to help their own. Being on the inside reveals interesting insights. "I think India wanted to be like Canada [is to the U.S.], hiding behind China," President Nasheed observes, since India is rather reluctant to make the kind of stand at the summit that China is. I can't imagine many leaders are willing to let a documentarian sit at their meetings with aides and occasionally showing the kind of political and PR legerdemain that must be used in these situations. The Island President may be aiming to be an environmental documentary, but it's actually one of the most fascinating political documentaries in recent years.

DOC NYC brings 'Into the Abyss,' 'Scenes of a Crime'

By Sarah Sluis

Now in its second year, DOC NYC combines a curated selection of documentaries, many making the festival rounds, with panels geared toward those in the entertainment industry. Last year's selections included Werner Herzog's Cave of Forgotten Dreams and Errol Morris' spectacularly funny and bizarre Tabloid.

This year's selections at DOC NYC also promise to showcase movers-and-shakers. In advance of DOC NYC's Nov. 2-10 festival, I took a look at two documentaries focusing on the (in)justice system: Werner Herzog's Into the Abyss and Scenes of a Crime.

After seeing countless documentaries and TV shows about innocent people on death row, I expected Herzog's Into the Abyss to choose an seemingly innocent, death row-bound inmate to profile. No. Herzog believes that Michael James Perry, scheduled to die for a triple homicide, is guilty. He just doesn't believe that execution is an appropriate punishment. In typical Herzog fashion, he opens wide the case and its consequences without pushing too hard in one direction. When it comes to poetic metaphors, however, he occasionally veers too far, as when he lingers on a landfill swarming with flocks of grub-seeking birds. Herzog interviews a woman who lost her brother and mother to the killings, and Perry's accomplice, Jason Burkett, who was also found guilty of homicide but sentenced to life in prison. Herzog also interviews the woman who married Burkett after he was sent to prison and is pregnant with his child.

Herzog, a native of Germany, has an outsider's eye. He picks parts of Texas' decay that American eyes have been trained to ignore. Never has a truck stop or trailer home been imbued with such desolate meaning. The triple homicide itself showed a shocking disregard for life: Three people died so a couple of boys could joyride for 72 hours in a red Camaro. Perry and Burkett seemed to commit the crime for bragging rights, but one of them grew up in such extreme poverty, it made me wonder. For him, was stealing a red Camaro the equivalent of someone else's million-dollar heist, each offering the opportunity of unimaginable wealth?

Scenes of a Crime mines the territory of Morris' classic The Thin Blue Line, laying out a miscarriage of justice, minus the reenactments. The film's primary focus is the twelve-hour, videotaped interrogation of a father of six, who police officers believe harmed his baby and led to his death. After so many hours of interrogation, the man confesses, using the exact scenario suggested by police. His defense attorneys call it a coerced confession, but it is incredibly hard to persuade a jury that someone could falsely confess to a crime. The footage is excruciating to watch, and the filmmakers focus far too much screen time to the repetitive, painful questions. There must have been a more effective way to make the viewers feel as if they were undergoing an interrogation themselves. When they repeat the footage later on in the documentary, it feels more redundant rather than imbued with new meaning.

One bright spot is the filmmakers' choice to intercut the interrogation with a police training video laying out the Reid technique. After watching the step-by-step process, I realized I'd seen this many times on reality cop shows (like "The First 48"). Something about seeing psychological manipulation laid out so plainly had a chilling effect. Let's put it this way: If I were one of those sympathetic drug lords in "The Wire," I would make my underlings watch the video so they could figure out how to beat this technique.

By focusing so much on the footage of the interrogation, the documentary takes awhile to get to the heart of the matter. After reading a lengthy piece about medical professionals misdiagnosing shaken baby syndrome recently, I assumed that this would be the crux of the case. Instead, it becomes clear that the baby died of sepsis--though jurors did not agree and found him guilty. It's a shock to find out that this poor man is serving twenty-five years to life, and I hope the man successfully appeals his case. Though the filmmakers never bring it up, racism and discrimination undoubtedly played a part. Why else would a doctor shout out, "They murdered their baby!" when it was only one of three options on the differential diagnosis? Or a juror state that she was a human resources manager and she just thought the man was lazy, and she didn't like him? Stereotypes about black male fathers may have been the tipping point that led multiple people to assume the man was guilty, not innocent until proven guilty.

DOC NYC has much more in store, so check back for additional coverage of the documentary festival.