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Kate Beverly and Miranda Edmonds love their AIDC Book.

Well, I’m almost near the end of Day 3 and so I will wind up with a smorgasbord of impressions. Here are some of the folk I met between the sessions.KATE BEVERLY from the Perth branch of AFTRS and filmmaker MIRANDA EDMONDS were relaxing between sessions. “I wish I’d bought a soccer ball for the park across the street, “Beverly said. Edmonds said. “I’m here to absorb everything by osmosis.” I asked Beverly to name her favourite documentary. Her enigmatic reply, “One that hasn’t been made yet called ‘Finding Mozart’.”

I spoke to director GARY COOPER and asked him if he had a documentary idea brewing, “When Talkabout Walkabout went to Canada we thought – why don’t we actually make one film together connecting all the indigenous people of the world? I’m looking at Brazil, the Amazon, Antarctica and Alaska and working out what connects us all. “

AIDAN O’BRYAN and JANELLE LANDERS of WBMC were very happy with the reception to their feature documentary about the Western Australian music scene Something in the Water. The film had just played a week at the Luna in Leederville. “It’s been incredibly well received, “ O’Bryan said, “On average we’ve had 80% capacity every night.

Finally I’d like to finish with a small list of things I discovered at the Conference.

Firstly, although not an international visitor and having gone nowhere near the beach, I had still managed to get sunburned sitting at the front of the Esplanade Hotel. This is what comes of ignoring Andrew Ogilvie’s warnings in his speech on Day 1.

Secondly, I discovered that documentaries are best left to those who have the passion and the drive. I thought my chances of selling my new idea – Angry Dollars: A History of Personal Income Tax – were slim to none. No hook, see?

Thirdly, I’d like to thank the AIDC folk and the people of ScreenWest for asking me to blog the conference. It was most eye-opening.

Yours Cinematically,

Phil Jeng Kane

The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).

Okay, yesterday I called NORM BOLEN ubiquitous, but even higher up the ubiquity ladder is the Conference Director JOOST DEN HARTOG. He was everywhere at once. And no, there’s no such thing as a ubiquity ladder, I made it up.For the entire conference, I attempted to interview Joost, but it might have been easier to secure a chat with Justin Timberlake. Finally in the second half of the final day, I was able to ask Joost a few questions.

I asked him how he thought the AIDC went. He said it wasn’t for him to say and that he was very keen to get feedback. He was always ready for a chat with someone in a corridor to find out what did and didn’t work for them.

Joost has been working for the AIDC since 2005, then he was market place co-ordinator. AIDC 2008 is the second of the three conferences he is contracted to do. He said he was feeling a little seedy because he had been up at 4am to pick up Greenaway from the airport. One of the most frequent questions he had heard about the AIDC keynote speaker was, “Greenaway, what does he have to do with documentary?”

He explained that he finds the distinction between drama and documentary or factual filmmaking to be somewhat artificial, especially in its visual treatment. He also said that the conference needs an intellectual basis as well as commercial one. “We have to talk about more at these things than just business models and how to make money.”

Even as he speaks, a stream of delegates need to talk with Joost or say goodbye if they’re taking an early flight back home. He says he is already thinking about the next AIDC, although he has to attend to something even more important when he gets back to Adelaide. He and his partner are going to have a child. “That’s what has me excited the most.” She is also the director of the Adelaide Fringe Festival. So according to Joost there will be three weeks of craziness first.

Joost says that the AIDC has a wide brief and it is difficult to satisfy such diverse interests as those the conference attracts. He thinks the most important thing is to inspire the conference delegates.

I pointed out that that I had heard about half a dozen ways to pronounce his name during the conference. He said his name, “Joost” and to my ear it sounded like it rhymed with ‘toast’. He said the pronunciation he liked the least was “Juiced.” So there you have it, Aussies.

The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).

Martina, Dale and David – The MeetMarket Team

For those who didn’t necessarily want the public pressure of the DOCUmart there was another way to connect with buyers at the MeetMarket. I spoke with MeetMarket manager, the AFC’s DALE FAIRBAIRN. She explained that a call for pitches from filmmakers had been made in October. Fifty-five applications were received. These were written and filmed pitches that were made available to an international panel of buyers on the MeetMarket website. If a buyer thought a project sounded interesting they registered that interest online. From here the fifty-five projects were culled down to twenty that were invited to the AIDC in Perth. Fairbairn explained that some filmmakers had expressed a preference for the MeetMarket experience over DOCUmart. She said the idea of MeetMarket was to bring together top quality projects of interest in the current market.

Meetings were scheduled to run for either 15 or 25 minutes. The MeetMarket room upstairs at the Esplanade was large. It had a dozen tables and when I was there a number and buyers arrived in groups and huddled around the talking. The place was quite noisy as it buzzed with the energy of potential docos. I had a look at the MeetMarket website (it’s usually only accessible to buyers) and I clicked through some impressive three minute filmed segments. These were either images brought together for the pitch or sometimes footage that had already been shot.

At the end of the day, Fairbairn and her team put on drinks so that the pitchers and buyers could talk more informally about projects not in the final twenty.

The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).

Hail Documentarians,

We were all a little excited and starstruck, director PETER GREENAWAY, the most painterly of all filmmakers was the keynote speaker of the conference. If you’re a Generation X-er like myself, then you’ll remember Greenaway making ground-breaking films like The Draughtsman Contract (1982), A Zed and Two Noughts (1985), The Belly of an Architect (1987) The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989). And no, not a documentary among them.SANDY GEORGE did the introduction and went through Greenaway’s history as a filmmaker and explained that he is focussing more on curated works for art museums now. He was also a VJ. And now here he was, with us in Perth, Western Australia for two and half days.

MR GREENAWAY strode up to the mic vigorously. For those of us who ask this kind of question to ourselves, he soon told us that he was 65 years old. Then he proceeded to wow the full house that he had drawn to the big room at the AIDC.

“I’m here under false pretences, “ he said, “I hardly think of myself as a filmmaker. “ He said that he always had, “the avowed intention of a career in the manufacture of images” And then the irresistible statement, “I stand before you at my age and I’m still wondering what I should do when I grow up.” Nods all around the audience at that one and a few knowing laughs. “There’s not much else I would rather do, he said.

And yet. he had a period in the 1990s of almost giving up filmmaking entirely.

If I were allowed to come back again, I would like to come back as an architect,” he said. Those of us who remembered his film Belly of an Architect said, “uh-huh” internally. “These are people you can’t avoid. Architecture has a dominance because we have to live in these places.” For those with a wary bent of mind, Greenaway was clearly setting out some categories and was about to make some comparisons.

And then he was into it. His thesis was that we have had 8000 years of painting and 112 years of filmmaking and yet the former had hardly affected the latter. He queried whether cinema was really 112 years old – “That’s if you believe that it was invented in France by the Lumiere brothers.” Greenaway was being wry; questioning the orthodoxy of our cherished beliefs about Cinema.

“I’m convinced that Cinema was invented at the beginning of the 17th Century by painters who were studying the manipulation of light.” He quoted Bazin who said that Cinema combined Literature, Painting and Theatre. “But there’s precious little painting,” Greenaway said.

He then went on to make the point that despite being around for 112 years and despite there being the visual medium of painting as inspiration, filmmaking remained resolutely text-based. In his opinion. “You documentary makers have it even worse, you’ve actually got ‘document’ inside your word. You’re lost to start with. Your text pushes everything and image comes drifting in from the side.”

He was positing a thesis. Being provocative. Or “throwing down” as we used to say on 21 Jump Street.

“We’ve had 112 years of cinema, or illustrated text. We still haven’t invented something entirely autonomous. It is associated with other vocabulary. I can’t go to a producer with a book of sketches, four paintings and a lithograph,” he said. He prodded the audience and encouraged delinquent behaviour, “When the money is really in your pocket, throw the goddamn script away and make your film.”

“Text is in its rightful place in the bookshop rather than the cinema. Derrida said ‘the image has the last word’ – which is very good in any language.”

And then, the big statement. “For 8000 years the world has been dominated by the text makers. They are the gate-keepers. Since the digital revolution, the age of the text-maker is over. The age of the image-maker begins. If you believe this – this is the beginning of a golden age.”

“My first audience was my brother and his dog. These things start in an uncontrolled and unserious way. I sometimes think that you need to see all your films by 21. Because suspension of disbelief is a very fragile thing. “

“The main difference between me and you is that I know I’m telling lies. Documentary filmmakers are like any makers of fiction.”

“Cinema has used up all its tropes and paradigms. A new technology comes along and creates its own vocabulary. As with any new technology there are three groups of people who come with it. The innovators, the consolidators and the third group who turn the whole thing upside down again.

The Greenaway showed us something of what he considered part of the new digital age. It was film of a curated work in an Italian Gallery. He called it “2000 Years of Italian design in five minutes”. This led to his claiming that his work is not appreciated in his homeland and that in fact, it was the Italians who best appreciated it. Consequently he had spent some time there of late, curating exhibitions in art galleries. These featured his explorations in what he could achieve with the video image in a museum space,

This included concepts like a large room with connected projections on all three walls and the ceiling. This involved images of 120 green-screened actors against numerous digitally manipulated backgrounds. The story wasn’t a narrative although it was screened in an hourly loop at the museum. All dialogue and narration was in Italian.

But this was all merely preparatory to the screening of a work he created using Rembrandt’s painting Nightwatch as the literal basis. The details of the painting were scanned into a computer and subsequently manipulated in a number of ways. The end result was projected back onto the painting itself.

We saw a film of this – it was a live computerised, digitised performance over the painting. The original narrative of the painting – an unlawful killing by musketeers – was retold using a rich soundscape and an amazing number of visual effects. Flat objects and people were made to seem three-dimensional, The foreground, middle ground and background were highlighted according to the soundtrack. Lightning flashed, thunder broke and rain poured all over this painted crime scene.

“It’s pretty awesome, isn’t it?” Greenaway said after his seven-minute film. The audience applauded. Almost to a person they seemed to be saying, yes, it is rather awesome. The director then informed us that a number of galleries were looking for something of the same computerised re-imagining for some of their great works. Monet’s Water Lilles, Picasso’s Guernica.

Finally Greenaway showed a long trailer for his forthcoming film on Rembrandt’s life called Nightwatching. Fans of The Office were treated to the sight of Tim (Martin Freeman) as the famous Dutch Painter. For Greenaway fans here was imagery reminiscent of films like the Draughtsman’s Contract.

Greenaway ended his presentation by asking for questions. “I await your provocations,” he said. But we, the audience were too polite. We had been eating out of his hand for a full hour.

In the break after the session, I spoke to a number of people who loved the talk; who loved what he had done with the painting Nightwatch. This is not how I felt.

Personally, I felt that if I had to watch a painting given this kind of treatment, live as it were, for more than a minute, I would be bored, frustrated and extremely annoyed. Of course, he annoyed you,” I was told, “He’s all about the image and you’re a writer.

Fair enough. Except that Greenaway is extremely well-spoken and well-read. He quoted Bazin and Derrida to make his point. His defence of Image over text was extremely wordy and elegantly wordy at that. It was not, say, a multimedia collage of image and sounds that said, the Golden Age of the Image has begun. Is there any way to say that with an image? Isn’t the problem with just images that they may lack meaning and substance?

So I disagree strongly with the notion that we are about to embark on a new art form in which the image is all. But Mr Greenaway made his point well with great clarity and terrific illustrations. He came and told us his view of things and stirred up thought, conversation and a little consternation. It was everything one requires of a keynote speaker.

The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).

NORM BOLEN was everywhere. On page 34 of your invaluable AIDC brochure, it outlines his years at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and Alliance Atlantis Communications. So, Day 2, he was being ubiquitous. There he was moderating a number of DOCUmart sessions and now here he was in the Yellow Room talking about Making Money on the Web.

“If you want to be part of the digital future,” he said, “You have to future proof”. As is often the case at in conference world, a speaker was employing the rhetorical device of saying that a particular cycle, genre, format or model of business was at an end. Code Blue! Crash cart – stat!

Documentary died on Day 1. Today television needed CPR. And as we know, the figures and studies bear out Bolen’s contentions. He spoke about his experience with television, which he dubbed ‘conventional television’. He said that with on-line advertising revenue growing 25% annually television ad revenue growth was flat.

“I became seized of the idea,” he said. “The old idea that content is everything is no longer true. Now everything is content.” He also used the example of the teens and early twenties in his own family to state that young people are abandoning television.

This all led to his discussion of mDialogue an Internet based distribution platform for filmmakers. He is a director of this company.

BRUNO FELIX from the Netherlands spoke about Submarine his independent production studio and online network.

TINA DALTON managing director of production company Wild Visuals spoke about re-purposing material that doesn’t make it to the final edit. Basically the suggestion was to turn this footage into stock footage. Her company had done this and was exploring a pay per clip model currently on their site. “Shoot as high-end as you can, because that shot can be used over and over again in the future.”

I was distracted at one point, by the idea that Dalton might have once been Ranger Tina on kids’ television. This is back in the days of what we call conventional television, understand?

Clearly, given my riff on ex-Midnight Oil singer and current Federal Minister Peter Garrett, yesterday, I find it hard to accept that people move on in their professional lives.

I’m still getting over the years I did a paper round. Could there be a documentary in this? Could I pitch someone my idea for working in supermarket night-fill during the 1980s?

Surely, I was certainly in the right place.

See You on Day 3,

Phil Jeng Kane

The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).

Martin Potter talking shoes and Katerina Cizek

Between sessions whilst trying something faddish called a ‘vegetarian’ (I think) baguette, I met MARTIN POTTER, Manager of Development and programs from the Media Resource Centre in Adelaide. Martin was asking ALAN CARTER from Alley Kat Productions where he got his neo Dunlop Volleys from. Shoes. Bringing the world together.

We discussed the world from a Screen Resources Organisation point of view. When not blogging the AIDC, I work at the Film and Television Institute in Fremantle. So there was the interest of hearing where certain things were similar and others were different in this very particular sector of the Australian filmmaking landscape.

Martin also wanted to make mention of a Q&A session he had done with filmmaker Katerina Cizek, the day before. She had been satellite linked from Canada. Click here to find out more about Cizek’s work as a filmmaker in residence.

The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).

Friends and colleagues had told me that the DOCUmart part of AIDC was quite compelling, even if you weren’t part of the main action. At this DOCUmart, 16 projects were being pitched before the panel of national and international buyers.

I walked into the big room and saw a rectangular formation of tables. On one of the rectangle’s short sides the Moderators sat. Opposite, on the other short side, sat the pitching team. On the remaining long sides, sat the buyers. Wherever the audience sat in the room, you could see the action on two large screens.

The teams came up, sat down and began their pitch, sometimes with an accompanying clip or powerpoint presentation. Those of us in the audience had a detailed folder to read from, giving an outline of the project, budget summary and team CV details. If you’ve never pitched in this kind of environment, you could not sit here and not learn something.

The creative team had a limited time to make their pitch. A bell sounded to indicate it was time to wrap up. Then the Moderator directed questions from the buyers. It took about an hour to process through four presentations. Everyone was on their mettle. The presentations would usually be story first and then the amount of budget that was being sought.

As I watched, it seemed that Buyers’ opinions came in two main categories. The desirable, “Yes, we in Brussels would be interested in a film called EVERYBODY HATES THE H.R. GUY, let’s talk after the session.” And the second type – where the pitch went awry from the point of view of the buyer.

In the sessions I was in, most teams seemed to be pitching a feature idea that could be cut down to an hour for television. A number of buyers would say they were interested in a particular project for acquisition as a finished film rather than for presale.

There were some very serious and heart-rending stories. Others were more obviously entertaining and told tales of oddball characters with a unique take on life.

At first, from an audience’s point of view, it seemed like theatre in the round. But as I sat through more pitches and saw how nervous and occasionally defensive some of the pitchers were, it began to feel more like watching a sport with several teams on the field. It’s not a great metaphor, because from the point of view of the pitching team, the buyers must feel like the Harlem Globetrotters.

Anyway, I would encourage anyone who hasn’t pitched their cherished doco idea to attend a DOCUmart session as a spectator. As I say, it’s very instructive.

The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).

Hail Documentarians,

Day 2 of the conference dawned. I drank coffee and flipped through the FFC’s facts guide to the Producer Offset. Or the Producer Upset, as SANDY GEORGE had called it the day before. On page 3 of FFC’s graphically dramatic A-5 pamphlet it says, “The Producer Offset is 40% of Qualifying Australian Production Expenditure incurred on feature film and 20% of Qualifying Australian Production Expenditure incurred on projects that are not feature films.”

I mention this, not because I have any idea of the practicalities of this, but more by way of observing that understanding how a policy plays out in the real world is meat and drink for Producers, Funding Body types and Broadcasters. The market place side of a conference like the AIDC is where ALL the action is for probably a majority of the delegates at the conference.

And then there are people like me; right-brained types who fall into that particular category of creatives as outlined in DAVID TILEY’s session yesterday. People who need to be a little harder-nosed about where the money is coming from to buy dinner and pay school fees and vet bills. To paraphrase Mr Tiley, “making a film and having a career is not necessarily the same thing.”

I cursed my lack of documentary ideas. A film about a dog who can kind of say, “I Love You”? Gah! I had nothing.

I kept drinking my coffee. Phrases tumbled out as delegates assembled for the sessions and passed me for their hit of caffeine. My father was a member Communist Party in the 1960s, someone declared to their friend. More grumbles about Skype. And this one, “These people live in abject poverty,” either another satisfied Franklin Mint customer or part of an impromptu pitch.

I heard talk of the previous night’s event. Too much food, we were turning away the man with the plate of scallops. Much drinking, natch. Mention of a handstand competition.

I had been elsewhere, blogging virtuously. Sad to say.

Speaking of the high art of blogging. The AIDC is also being blogged by Graeme Watson. His Across the Mediaverse can be found in the blogroll on the right hand side of your screen.

The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).

So,

By the afternoon I was getting the hang of all this conferencing. It helped that I ate none of the muffins, biscuits, cookies or friands on offer. In fact, I barely noticed them, because I was concentrating on the concepts that some very committed doco people were getting across in the sessions. And not eating the free baked goods.

First, in the session What’s Cooking In The World of Australian Documentary?, DAVID TILEY, editor of Screen Hub presented an elegant overview of Australian documentary world; although, a number of his insights also applied to drama equally as well.

He spoke of the different types of documentary maker and noted the homemade variety and the ‘indie’ indie among others. He also highlighted what he saw as a knowledge and skills gap that seemed to be based on generational change. He pointed out that there were filmmakers and others now in their late 50s who have had a lot responsibility for decision-making placed in them for almost thirty years. Whereas there were people who were now in their late 30s, who were supposed to be grateful for getting a job as a runner. There was much nodding around the room at this one.

After considering a tea cake or a macadamia cookie and rejecting both, I attended the session in which the ‘three amigos’, the CEOs of Film Australia, the Australian Film Commission and the Film Finance Corporation discussed the process of amalgamating these agencies into a Super-Agency by July 1st 2008.

Unfortunately, two of the amigos, FFC’s Brian Rosen and AFC’s Chris Fitchett were back east attending to this very business. DARYL KARP of Film Australia gave the update with assistance from Moderator TANIA CHAMBERS from the NSW Film and Television Office.

Karp made it clear how they saw their job as choosing low-risk strategies for transition. They are charged with making the merger happen without job redundancies, but have to consolidate management and finance. All programs currently running at all three organisations will be in place until December 08. Locating the super-agency under one roof, they saw as desirable but the actual decision – where will the building be – needs to be made by the new CEO and Board. A plethora of other major decisions will, of course, be the job of the new management.

The Three Amigos who are also three quarters of a Steering Committee have to report constantly to Federal Minister for Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett. The government is prioritising the legislation to approve the merger because it all has to go through Parliament by the end of March in order to make the July 1st changeover.

The bill is having a first reading in Parliament during the conference and the text of Minister Garret’s speech was zipped into the room during the session. Chambers and Karp read out salient parts of the speech and did some interpretation on the run.

Garrett’s words probably hadn’t been this carefully examined since the days when he wrote, “L. Ron Hubbard can’t save your life, Superboy takes a Plutonium wife.” But that was a very long time ago.

See you on on Day 2,

Phil Jeng Kane

The contents of this Blog are the sole opinions of the author Phil Jeng Kane, and it does not represent the views of ScreenWest or the Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).