Blogging the London International Documentary Festival: Engaging Audiences

Entertainment before screening of The Last American Freak Show.

Let’s backtrack a bit and tell me about how the festival came into being.

The festival evolved out of a project at UCL [University College London] in the anthropology department, where a series of documentary films took place, because academics were interested in using film in their research and teaching, and we thought it would be interesting to bring together filmmakers and academics to discuss the two disciplines, and hopefully form the other through these debates. That proved very popular, and out of that came a proposal to curate a series of talks at the British Museum, and then the idea of a documentary festival.

What needs is this festival filling that others aren’t?

What we decided at the very beginning was that this festival was not about looking at our audience as consumers if you like, but rather as participants, in these debates that we stage. Because we know that people who come to these films are usually informed already, they’re usually interested in the topics, and they come along with very, very good questions. Now, in many instances, the director will admit that they are not an expert in this field. So our basic premise is we have panels that can answer any question from the audience, in an informed and intelligent way.

Talk to me a bit about the themes of this year’s festival.

I think the overriding theme this year is this notion of film and social change, the idea of advocacy using film. We opened with the Age of Stupid; the following night we had a film called Intelligent Life. So the notion of stupidity and intelligence also seems to be in the air. This year we’ve also had three films about prisons, one in Canada, Italy and Pakistan. (Note: four actually, counting US film The Narcotic Farm).

London seems to be a hotbed of debate for issues confronting the Western and the Arab/Muslim world – this also seems to be coming out in the LIDF.

I think that’s fair to say. At our Pakistan day, we have a panel discussion on representations of the other, responsibilities of the UK media within the context of the so-called war on terror. We’ve had a lot of submissions from Iran, Palestine, Pakistan and India as well, all of which I think reflect upon these issues of religious-political identities.

And even within Western countries, with films such as Intifada NYC and Close Your Eyes and Look at Me, which is about a Western woman wearing a headscarf somewhere in the UK.

In Edinburgh I think it was, which also tells you something. Obviously these issues are not geographically bounded. The problem of wearing the burka or headscarf doesn’t only exist in Iran, it exists in…New York. So we are negotiating these issues right on our very doorstep. And once we understand that, and these films do help us understand that, it does soften that very hard discourse of “them” and “us.”

Do feel that audiences that are attending this festival are different from those of other London festivals?

Yes I think they are. So we will have a film on a certain subject, and we’ll have an audience for that, who may not go to other films. And it’s not an industry-focused festival, we don’t have pitching sessions, there’s no sales going on, not overtly anyway – we don’t cater to that. So we don’t really have a strong industry presence.

So you are getting more people such academics, and perhaps more of multi-ethnic audience?

Yes, activists and so on. They’re people who are interested in issues, and find that documentary film is good way to go to those issues and also connect with the people who might be of use to them. So it’s part of our editorial policy to have these very strong panels. It’s happened many, many times, people will say it was great to come to your screening, I had a chance to talk to this person who worked for this NGO, and now my organization is talking with them about a project were going to do together.

Turnouts seem quite good, but are you looking at ways of building your audiences further?

This year our numbers have gone up, across the board. I think the way we can look to develop our audience, is, first of all, to situate the festival as a cultural event for the masses for London, and hopefully make Londoners identify with this as something they should be proud of and support, because it shows to world to Londoners on their doorstep. And the other thing is niche marketing, finding audiences that wouldn’t traditionally go to a film festival. Whether it be a community group in Brent, or people from the Somali community who might think that seeing a film about Somalia and what’s going on there is relevant to them. The point is we have to find those audiences; we have to work to get to them.

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