You’d have to look hard to find a more compatible pair than the Music documentary and the streaming ecosystem. The genre relies on the celebrity artist and is therefore pre-sold to an intense fan base that crosses borders, delivering on the streamers’ global ambitions. The market leaders can spend big on Music: $25 million by …
“Bullshit!” That’s how Donald Trump’s attorney general William Barr describes the claimed evidence of election fraud presented in the documentary 2000 Mules. Barr was being deposed for last week’s Congressional hearings on the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol. The hearings characterize the proponents of these election falsehoods — like the producers of …
JAN ROFEKAMP is the highly-respected, veteran documentary distributor and consultant who has led sales agent FILMS TRANSIT INTERNATIONAL since 1982, overseeing more than 500 documentaries. Jan attended the post-Covid 2022 edition of the giant CANNES FILM FESTIVAL. He shares his Takeaways on what happened at Cannes, and what it reveals about the state of the …
The New York WILD Film Festival is packed with great viewing from adventure exploration to pure wildlife and conservation. NY WILD runs from April 1 to 9. Below are links to the program. And to the trailer. Award I will be accepting an award for Finnish fiilmmaker Minna Dufton. Her documentary BIG vs SMALL that tells …
A Sundance Film Festival award lags only behind an Oscar nomination as a measure of success for documentarians. But what are the odds that a U.S. or international documentary will earn a slot on the Sundance program? Is $848 million really the total spent on all those submissions that missed out? Read on for my …
What are the key demand trends in the documentary sector across platforms, and how are the festivals responding? That was the ambitious topic for this morning’s recording of an engaging panel for the upcoming Guangzho International Documentary Film Festival 2021. China had almost fallen off my radar after many years of deep involvement in the …
The buzz of the week centred on The Walt Disney Company‘s announcement that Disney+ had added only 2 million subscribers in 3Q 21. Lightshed Ventures Partner Rich Greenfield shared with Bloomberg‘s Emily Chang his useful analysis of why Disney’s streaming strategy is failing. The message: Disney owns all the programming and other resources to accelerate …
The COP 26 UN Climate Change Conference opens in Glasgow on October 31, bringing urgency to the race to save our planet. Documentary commissioners, producers and distributors have responded with lots of new orders. Does global warming have the urgent audience appeal of programs that address hot button issues like true crime, gender, and social …