Outside the Broadcast Box: Finding Alternative Funding Sources for Docs
In addition to hosting all the old favourites at our DOC Marketplace Evenings this year, we have also invited a panel of filmmakers to come and speak about finding alternatives to fund your documentary project.
Join filmmaker and moderator Liz Marshall to start what we hope will be an ongoing and inspiring community-wide conversation. Liz has received both traditional and alternative funding sources over the years for her documentaries and is curious to learn more about the funding road less-travelled. How can Canadian doc makers become less dependent on large broadcaster triggers and finance our films in new and different ways? Our panel will include resourceful filmmakers who have had considerable success funding their docs through private foundations, non-profits, unions, individuals, educational markets and other innovative and surprising sources. We will discuss the challenges and benefits of their "alternative" funding strategies and collectively try to unearth practical solutions for cultivating a new funding culture for docs. The purpose of the evening is to gather information and trigger discussion, rather than provide prescriptive answers.
Panelists:
LAURA SKY: Producer/Director, Sky Works Charitable Foundation
In 1980, after eight years at the National Film Board, Laura Sky began her career as an independent film director and producer. She established Sky Works Charitable Foundation in 1983. Sky Works is a non-profit documentary organization dealing with contemporary social issues. The process of creating the films and the subsequent dissemination is a community development effort, working with local, regional, and national groups, to create strategies for social change. http://www.skyworksfoundation.org/
CHANDA CHEVANNES: Producer/Director, The People's Picture Company
Chanda Chevannes specializes in creative, socially-driven documentary films and educational videos for the non-profit sector. Her most recent film, Living Downstream, which follows ecologist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, recieved funding from a wide range of charitable foundations and arts councils in both Canada and the United States. http://www.livingdownstream.com
RAJ PANIKKAR
Raj Panikkar comes to the panel with experience and success in what's now commonly known as "crowd source funding". Panikkar is the Executive Producer of the award winning feature-length romantic comedy film "At Home by Myself" --also known as the "Pocket Change Film. " The film was generously and primarily funded by other people's 'pocket change' contributed over the course of 18 months via an online campaign, which makes this an untraditional and highly effective method of film financing! http://www.fifthground.com
Moderator:
LIZ MARSHALL: Filmmaker, LizMars Productions
Liz Marshall is an award-winning Canadian filmmaker. Her work combines a poetic sensibility and an intimate character-driven approach with a strong commitment to social justice. Liz has directed documentary projects shot all over the world: in Central and West Africa, sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, South Asia, Central and South America, Europe, and North America. She has focused on censorship issues for writers, war-affected children, globalization, gender, sweatshop labour, education, refugees, HIV/AIDS, popular culture, music and the written and spoken word. In early 2010 Liz completed Water On The Table, her first feature length documentary. http://www.wateronthetable.com/
