{"id":70,"date":"2007-09-22T16:48:23","date_gmt":"2007-09-22T16:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/deptfordtv.wordpress.com\/2007\/09\/22\/docagora-hotdocs-toronto-27th-april-2007\/"},"modified":"2007-09-22T16:48:23","modified_gmt":"2007-09-22T16:48:23","slug":"docagora-hotdocs-toronto-27th-april-2007","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dorothea.tv\/?p=70","title":{"rendered":"DocAgora, hotdocs, toronto, 27th april 2007"},"content":{"rendered":"

The research “the author vs. the collective” was presented at HotDocs documentary film festival in Toronto, Canada. See slides<\/a> (as .pdf).<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

“The Documentary Auteur<\/em> is a dead duck in the digital water.\u201d<\/p>\n

quoted from http:\/\/www.nfb.ca\/filmmakerinresidence\/blog\/?cat=2&paged=2<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what 6 people debated, 3 for and 3 against, on stage at Hot Docs, during the third real-life instalment of DocAgora<\/strong><\/a>. A clap-athon from the audience was to determine the winner.<\/p>\n

FIR friends Peter and Amit, co-founders of DocAgora, clearly set up this false dichotomy to get people thinking deeper about the shifting roles of authorship and the digital collective. But at times the discussion was painful, until finally, Adnan Hadzi<\/strong><\/a> on the \u201cpro-side\u201d finally wisely reframed the argument: its not authorship<\/em> that\u2019s dead, but its copyright and ownership<\/em> that\u2019s dead.<\/p>\n

But it was too late in the game, and the documentary world\u2019s Simon Cowell<\/strong><\/a>, Nick Fraser of the BBC<\/strong><\/a>, wrapped-it up for the \u201ccon\u201d side by trashing the whole debate, trashing the notion of Auteur: \u201cCould we please use a proper Anglo-Saxon word for it,\u201d then evoking the spirit of Torontonian Marshal McLuhan and (after trashing him) proclaiming the authorial duck alive and well by saying: \u201cQuite simply, works made collectively are boring\u201d.<\/p>\n

The clap-athon swung in favour for the con-side. Only then did the really interesting aruguments for the collective emerge. Montrealer Sylvia Van Brabant<\/strong><\/a> stood up from the audience and pointed out: \u201cWhat about the Native storytelling traditions\u2026 who are the authors in that!?\u201d Sanjay, another documentarian, criticized the \u201chyper-individualism of the west and its notions of authorship.\u201d And later in tha hallway, Marc Glassman<\/strong><\/a>, complained to me he hadn\u2019t gotten a chance to speak because he\u2019s bald and wears glasses. He wanted to desperately say \u201cWhat about Jazz, guys?\u201d<\/p>\n

Luckily, no real ducks were hurt in the making of DocAgora, as Peter is also one of the co-founders of the Greencode<\/strong><\/a>, a movement to green the doc industry.<\/p>\n

Btw, FIR is an alumni of DocAgora, as Gerry and I both presented at the inaugural DocAgora in Amsterdam.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, FIR had two presentations at Hot Docs, including one for Doc U, to university students all intent on becoming filmmakers. They later told their mentor, Sarah Zammit, who told me, \u201cI want to do what FIR does!\u201d and some even said, \u201cI want to be<\/em> her!\u201d Scary.<\/p>\n

quoted from documentary.org<\/a><\/p>\n

Author? Autheur? by Marc Glassman<\/p>\n

DocAgora, a nonprofit organization created to make the digital world comprehensible and useful to the documentary community, is the virtual brainchild of Peter Wintonick, co-director of the definitive profile of Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent<\/em>; Israeli-Canadian producer Amit Breuer (Checkpoint, Sentenced to Marriage<\/em>); and American \u201cwebjockey\u201d and director Cameron Hickey (Garlic and Watermelons<\/em>). In ancient Greece, the agora was the crossroads where a marketplace was established and public debates would occur. Using classic forms of communication\u2014debates, panel discussions and lectures\u2014DocAgora is bringing a new marketplace of ideas to documentary festivals around the world. A self-styled \u201cgypsy caravan\u201d of practical philosophers, DocAgora has been plying its trade for a year now, in festivals ranging from IDFA to Silverdocs to Hot Docs.<\/p>\n

Joining Breuer and Wintonick as core members of DocAgora is a trio of distinguished individuals. Fleur Knopperts brings marketing and financing expertise to the group. The former director of IDFA\u2019s FORUM, where scores of documentaries have found broadcasting and financial partners, Knopperts has recently become the industry and marketing director at the Sheffield Documentary Festival in England. Replacing Knopperts as the IDFA rep is industry veteran\u00a0Adriek van Nieuwenhuijzen, who has a wealth of knowledge on documentary filmmaking. Neil Sieling, American University New Media Fellow at the Center for Social Media, is recognized internationally as a consultant, TV producer (Alive from Off Center<\/em>) and curator, who helped to launch a multitude of projects, including Link TV.<\/p>\n

This sextet of visionary media activists scored its initial North American success with an afternoon of spirited, well-structured debates at the 2007 Hot Docs festival in Toronto, Canada. Seats were hard to come by as filmmakers, broadcasters, academics, producers and students jostled for space at University of Toronto\u2019s Innis Town Hall. The highlight was an Oxford Union-style debate organized around the proposition that \u201cThe authored documentary is a dead duck in the digital water.\u201d<\/p>\n

Arguing in favor of the proposition were activist director Daniel Cross (The Street, S.P.I.T.<\/em> and creator of the website homeless.org<\/em>); producer and cross-media creator Femke Wolting of the Dutch-based company Submarine (My Second Life<\/em>); and the British-based communications academic Adnan Hadzi (Liquid Culture, Deptford TV<\/em>). Arguing in favor of the auteur were director Jennifer Fox (Flying: Confessions of a Free Woman<\/em>), new technologies student Brad Dworkin (Ryerson University in Toronto) and broadcaster\/producer\/writer Nick Fraser (BBC\u2019s Storyville<\/em>).<\/p>\n

Operating as the moderator, Sieling pointed out that DocAgora questions the new digital age in \u201ca Socratic manner without being pretentious.\u201d He set up the ground rules, keeping the speakers to a slightly loose five-minute time limit, announcing a \u201cclap-o-meter\u201d for an informal audience vote and explaining that Canadian veteran commissioning editor Rudy Buttignol would be the adjudicator for the debate.<\/p>\n

Cross brought the proceedings to life right away by announcing, \u201cThe water is poisoned, the ducks are dead and the auteurs ain\u2019t got no money\u2013\u2013so we\u2019re going to win this debate.\u201d He then challenged the audience, asking all the auteurs to stand up and be counted. No one stood up, hardly surprising in a room full of reticent Canadians and international doc-makers.<\/p>\n

Cross\u2019 argument centered on the collaborative nature of documentary filmmaking, particularly in cinema v\u00e9rit\u00e9. Since the main camera operator, sound recordist and editor have so much to do with the making of that type of doc, Cross suggested that the director is simply part of the process, not an auteur. To him, the best documentaries have layers of authorship, not just a single vision. He concluded by pointing out that the website he has founded, www.homelessnation.org<\/a><\/em>, welcomes that layering through blogs by street people, who are given cameras and encouraged to contribute pieces on issues ranging from police brutality to squatting<\/p>\n

Counter-punching for the auteur side, the distinguished documentary director Fox passionately argued, \u201cI live for authorship.\u201d To her, scientific and medical discoveries are authored. Even An American Love Story<\/em> has become as much her story as the subjects\u2019 because she gave shape and structure to the documentary. Fox expressed her belief in \u201ca singular vision\u201d of filmmaking, replying to Cross\u2019 layers of authorship by suggesting that creative collaborators only work well when there\u2019s a link: the auteur.<\/p>\n

Next up, presumably for the collective, non-auteur side, was Wolting. The Dutch new media pioneer used to be a programmer at the Rotterdam International Film Festival and, while there, grew weary of the old-style auteurs, who seemed to always get funding and have their films included in prestigious festivals worldwide. While arguing against that style of auteurism, which smacks of elitism, Wolting did make a case for young \u201cauthors\u201d being able to make their films with new digital tools. With YouTube, it is possible to distribute short films for free and bypass festivals altogether. A believer in the punk ethic DIY (do it yourself), Wolting ended up endorsing a \u201cnew age of auteurs,\u201d who are not members of a privileged class but simply the ones with the best ideas and methods of execution.<\/p>\n

Toronto new media artist Brad Dworkin followed Wolting to the podium, arguing on the auteur side. Dworkin pointed out that even Andrew Sarris, the critic who popularized the auteur theory in the US back in the 1960s, now admits that the old definition doesn\u2019t work anymore. Calling auteurism a \u201cpattern theory in flux,\u201d Dworkin asked, \u201cIn a digital world, can we say the author is dead? I don\u2019t think so; it\u2019s in a new form: the website itself.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dworkin suggested that we look at an entire website as one work: the layout, the text, even the color. \u201cThe new auteurs,\u201d he went on, \u201care the creators of the search engines because they develop the programming, aesthetics and set the parameters, like a director of a documentary.\u201d Citing an experiment he conducted in collective authorship, where 20 feeds of Toronto were shot simultaneously, Dworkin noted that by setting the time, format and place, he was, in fact, the auteur. Even in digital work, he concluded, \u201cthe context of the exhibition and distribution\u201d are handled by one person, who is effectively, its author or creator.<\/p>\n

Hadzi came to the debate highly prepared, as his PhD project is on \u201cthe author versus the collective.\u201d Taking the high road, he argued that \u201cthe author is in flux. The copyright is the dead duck in the digital water.\u201d Playing to the crowd as a tongue-in-cheek academic radical, Hadzi offered an astonishing amount of facts and speculation around new media technology. For instance, did you know that by 2015, your home computer will be able to store all the music created in the world? Or that by 2020, all the content ever created could potentially be stored in that same computer?<\/p>\n

Hadzi is a believer in \u201ccopyleft,\u201d a practice where directors and other artists voluntarily remove some usage restrictions from their own work. His ideas complement the \u201cfree use\u201d access to archival materials, which the Center for Social Media advocates. For Hadzi, open licensing and common source technology will open up production and distribution for documentary filmmakers. And the auteur? Artists with singular visions will provide knowledge and wisdom to the collective voices that will spring out of the new panacea in the upcoming digital age.<\/p>\n

Leaving the visionary thoughts of Hadzi, Dworkin and Wolting far behind, the avuncular Fraser arose to deliver the final speech of the debate. The well educated and fearsomely amusing Brit suffers fools badly. He denounced famed French cultural theorists Deleuze and Baudrillard, who were obvious inspirations for Hadzi and Dworkin in particular. Fraser pointed out that \u201ceveryone in the debate basically agrees with one another,\u201d making it impossible to do what a true Oxford debater would do in conclusion: \u201cTrash the enemies and praise our side.\u201d Apart from a nice but gratuitous aside praising Canadian media philosopher Marshall McLuhan (\u201cArtists are the canaries in the coal mine.\u201d), Fraser\u2019s conclusion was contentious but engaging: \u201cThe documentary shall survive made by individuals and collectives.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the adjudicator, it was upto Buttignol to deliver the final word. The clap-o-meter had already registered a resounding victory for the auteur side. An advocate of auteurism, Buttignol turned into a contrarian, admitting that he felt suspicious that the audience agreed with him. His conclusion was Jesuitical: \u201cThe argument is dead.\u201d Evoking yet another Canadian philosopher and scientist, Hubert Reeves, Buttignol left the audience with this thought: \u201cChaos and order co-exist.\u201d In other words, auteurs and collectives will always be among us.<\/p>\n

Doc Agora will certainly be with us for quite a while. The group plans to be a presence at this fall\u2019s Sheffield and Amsterdam documentary festivals. The future looms before them. Whether it\u2019s bright or not may well be the subject of another debate.<\/p>\n

Check out www.docagora.org<\/a><\/em> for details.<\/p>\n

Marc Glassman is the editor of <\/em>POV, Canada\u2019s leading documentary magazine, and of <\/em>Montage, the publication of the Directors Guild of Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The research “the author vs. the collective” was presented at HotDocs documentary film festival in Toronto, Canada. See slides (as .pdf). “The Documentary Auteur is a dead duck in the digital water.\u201d quoted from http:\/\/www.nfb.ca\/filmmakerinresidence\/blog\/?cat=2&paged=2 That\u2019s what 6 people debated, 3 for and 3 against, on stage at Hot Docs, during the third real-life instalment…Read more DocAgora, hotdocs, toronto, 27th april 2007<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dorothea.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dorothea.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dorothea.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dorothea.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dorothea.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dorothea.tv\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dorothea.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dorothea.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dorothea.tv\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}