CPB closure leaves documentary filmmakers trying to find funding : NPR

Director Carol Bash and Robert Shepard, director of images, on a set for the documentary, Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band. The documentary was made with the assistance of funding from public media.

Stacey Holman/PBS

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Stacey Holman/PBS

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) has helped make PBS a home for independent documentaries for greater than 50 years. In an electronic mail to NPR, CPB mentioned it offered over $24 million to documentary filmmaking through the 2024 monetary yr. The authorities’s determination to rescind CPB’s total $1.1 billion finances in July, subsequently inflicting it to announce its closure, led final week to PBS’s announcement that it will be decreasing its finances by 21%. This on prime of sweeping grant cancellations earlier this yr at each the National Endowments for the Humanities and the Arts, which each served as essential sources of federal funding for documentarians.

Despite these losses, the documentary group mentioned it isn’t giving up. “Can’t stop. Won’t stop,” mentioned filmmaker Carol Bash, whose 2015 documentary about jazz musician Mary Lou Williams, Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band, was made with public media help. “ We’re going to continue to find ways to think outside the box to get our films out there to audiences.”

Bash mentioned her group is now attempting to determine learn how to make up for the funding shortfall. “There’s going more international with your funding models,” she mentioned. “And of course, there’s the streamers.”

Leaning into streaming 

GBH is a public media powerhouse that produces such high-profile PBS sequence as Frontline, Nova and American Experience. President and CEO Susan Goldberg mentioned GBH will pause production on new American Experience episodes subsequent yr, with the purpose of reinventing the beloved, almost 40-year-old historical past sequence. (It additionally laid off a lot of the staff that produces the present.) Digital platforms are an essential a part of GBH’s plan. “How do we use digital channels to gather younger audiences into being really excited about American history?” Goldberg instructed NPR.

Goldberg mentioned GBH already works with Amazon and goals to develop extra relationships with streamers like Netflix, in addition to develop its choices on platforms resembling YouTube.

“I’m personally very invested in ensuring that storytelling  through documentaries continues to find an audience,” mentioned Angela Courtin, YouTube’s vp of sports activities and leisure advertising. Courtin mentioned the platform offers analytics and different sources to assist creators of every kind determine learn how to develop their attain, although it does not at present pay for content material. (Popular creators can earn income by means of such mechanisms as YouTube’s Partner Program and model offers.)

Streaming platform Tubi does often produce or co-produce documentaries, resembling When Black Women Go Missing, a 2024 co-production with Vice in regards to the disproportionately excessive variety of Black, feminine lacking individuals. It additionally generally acquires streaming rights, because it did in 2023 for Satan Wants You, a movie about satanic cults.

“It has been on the one level, a hit driven business,” mentioned Adam Lewinson, Tubi’s chief content material officer. Lewinson mentioned Tubi is about as much as accommodate not simply documentaries prone to attraction to massive audiences, but additionally area of interest titles by indie filmmakers that appeal to deep fandoms. Tubi principally hosts films on this latter class on its web site – thereby serving to movies discover audiences – however is not typically financing this work. “For many documentarians, if you say, ‘Are you looking to recoup your investment, or do you want your story to be seen by as many people as possible?’ The answer is always both. But ultimately they’ll lean toward, ‘We just want our content to be seen.'”

The challenges of the open market

Indie documentary insiders mentioned it is robust for many indie movies to achieve visibility within the profit-driven streaming market as a result of they don’t seem to be essentially made for mass audiences. “ Independent documentary has, by and large, always been a non-profit enterprise,” mentioned Carrie Lozano, president and CEO of ITVS, one of many nation’s greatest co-producers of indie documentaries. Its output consists of the 2004 Oscar-nominated characteristic The Weather Underground and the 2017 Peabody Award profitable Maya Angelou: And Still I Rise.

A nonetheless depicting John Jacobs, left, and Terry Robbins on the Days of Rage, Chicago, October 1969 from The Weather Underground. The Oscar-nominated documentary was made with funds from ITVS, one of many nation’s greatest co-producers of unbiased documentaries.

David Fenton/ITVS

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David Fenton/ITVS

ITVS acquired 86% of its funding from CPB. Lozano mentioned her non-profit has straight invested greater than $44 million in documentaries over the previous 5 years. Owing to the troublesome funding panorama, ITVS laid off roughly 20% of its employees in June. Lozano expects roughly 10 movies to lose out on funding this yr — an enormous lower from the as much as 40 characteristic and quick documentaries the group usually helps yearly.

The fundamentals of Internet connectivity are additionally a difficulty round streaming for many individuals, particularly those that dwell in small, rural communities. “What about audiences who aren’t connected to fast broadband, or live in Internet deserts?” mentioned filmmaker Jessica Edwards, whose documentaries embrace the 2015 profile Mavis! about singer Mavis Staples. “Many folks rely on free, over-the-air programming not just for news and weather but for a diversity of storytelling. What replaces that? More paywalls? It’s an equity issue as much as an artistic one.”

But for individuals like Mike Gonzalez, who’ve fought for many years to cease the movement of federal {dollars} into public media, there is not any cause why these movies ought to get particular therapy within the type of federal {dollars}.

A senior fellow on the Heritage Foundation suppose tank, Gonzalez instructed NPR that PBS — and NPR — wanted to be defunded on the federal stage owing to “the very biased programming” — a declare both networks’ leaders reject. Gonzalez mentioned he welcomes numerous storytelling within the media. “I don’t want to suppress views that are opposite to my own in the least,” Gonzalez mentioned, including that it is merely a matter of unbiased documentaries vying for eyeballs identical to every part else within the content material universe. “I fully expect that indie docs will not survive contact with the enemy once you have to compete in a commercial market,” Gonzalez mentioned. “But let the competition begin.”

CPB declined NPR’s request for remark and PBS didn’t reply.

Looking elsewhere

Given the realities of {the marketplace}, some documentarians are working to draw extra funding from conventional sources resembling companies, foundations and particular person donors.

“Maybe this is the opportunity to create a much larger fund specifically for Black stories that is not hampered by the whims of the political movement at the time,” mentioned Leslie Fields-Cruz, the chief director of Black Public Media. The non-profit helps Black-themed tales by indie filmmakers, such because the Oscar-nominated I Am Not Your Negro from 2016 and the Emmy-winning 2021 movie When Claude Got Shot. Fields-Cruz instructed NPR nearly half of her non-profit’s finances obtained worn out with the federal cuts. “We’re here in what I’m calling the worst case scenario,” she mentioned.

Meanwhile, some teams, such because the International Documentary Association (IDA), are working to recoup among the misplaced federal funds. “ IDA is trying to pursue more strategic litigation to see how we can get the support to challenge some of the actions that have been taken at the federal level,” mentioned Dominic Willsdon, the IDA’s govt director.

Mourning the loss

Underpinning all of this new strategizing is an amazing sense of grief.

“ Removing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting out of the media landscape means the world becomes much more impoverished, and the stories that get told will be much more anodyne,” mentioned Robb Moss, a documentary filmmaker and professor in Harvard University’s  division of artwork, movie and visible research.

Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris described the lack of federal help for documentaries as a serious blow to free speech. “Worrisome to anybody who values an independent media, who values the First Amendment, who values freedom of expression,” the Fog of War and The Thin Blue Line director mentioned. “The pursuit of truth is not a political issue. It’s a moral imperative that’s now being questioned daily.”

NPR has additionally acquired funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. No NPR govt was concerned within the enhancing of this piece.