"In keeping with past years, I’m awarding my own much-coveted grand prizes, just one each in the narrative and documentary categories, along with a list of five more especially hot titles to watch for in each division."
From reading the article I got the feeling that roughly half of the movies at Sundance were documentaries. It seems like documentaries are a very popular choice of movies for independent filmmakers. It makes sense; documentaries don't require actors or special effects. Documentaries only need a camera, some sound equipment, and a computer.
If documentaries have an allure to indie film makers, do documentaries by indie film makers have an allure to audiences? Is the "indiness" of these documentaries part of the reason we watch them? And what would people think of a documentary about a social issue, like the ones that played at Sundance this year, that was made by a big Hollywood studio?
1 comment:
I think that's a really good question! I started getting interested in indie films because of the fact that most of them were on Netflix instant watch, but that little bit of exposure really turned me on to the genre as a whole. (And I do think of indie as a genre that has many subgenres under it's umbrella, but that's a different subject entirely.) When an independent filmmaker makes and releases a documentary, the audience is fairly certain that the agenda of the filmmaker is what will be spotlighted. However, if a network/studio were to release a documentary, one has to question whose money went into it and where that person's loyalties lie. I think, generally, and this is a bold claim, that an audience would be more wary of a documentary from a Hollywood studio.
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