New Documentary Movement Afoot
There’s a problem with many documentaries that set out to make a difference in the world. Despite good intentions, many social issue films leave viewers feeling immobilized.
In contrast, inspiring documentaries such as Can I Be Frank?, Take Back Your Power and The Ghosts In Our Machine are solution-oriented films that are winning audience awards.
According to the award-winning film production company Way To Go Media, “In the film world there is currently a movement afoot to add a new cinema genre or classification, which could be called Transformational Media.”
Whether we call this emerging genre Conscious Filmmaking or Transformational Filmmaking or simply “documentaries that make a difference”, directors who are succeeding in touching and transforming viewers are implementing new editorial choices, fresh narrative devices and a more optimistic sensibility.
For instance, directors who are called to change the world through filmmaking need more than a “speak-truth-to-power” sensibility that nails the bad guy, as Charles Ferguson and Audrey Marrs did so well in the 2010 Academy Award-winning documentary “Inside Job”.
After decades of documentaries that have fiercely critiqued the wrongs in the world, audiences understand that the world is awash in global crises.
Now we need films that inspire audiences with solutions and “post, post-modern heroes”, as portrayed in award-winning transformational documentaries such as Occupy Love and The Cove.
These new filmmaking tactics emerge from a hopeful sensibility that many social issue films, which tend to be downers, lack. Are you interested in learning storytelling practices and editorial perspectives that take a fresh approach?
Check our new seminar, “Directing the Transformational Documentary,” which begins September 15th, 2014:
https://newdocediting.com/products/directing-the-transformational-documentary
