Documentary UK: a study of the feature documentary film industry

该项目旨在增加对英国当代长片纪录片产业的认识和理解。它有三个核心目标：1)绘制行业地图并分析其运作；2)将行业的形成和影响其发展的因素历史化；3)调查行业面临的批评和挑战，并探讨如何解决这些问题。自从英国纪录片运动（1926-46）的名义领袖约翰·格里尔森在1926年创造了这个词以来，纪录片已经成为英国电影文化的重要组成部分。然而，由于如此多的英国学术关注那个时期及其成就，后来的发展被边缘化了。其中一个发展是专题纪录片产业的出现，该产业由致力于制作播放或剧院放映的专题（70分钟或以上）电影的组织组成，这与事实或专业事实电视制作（尽管经常与之相关）截然不同。自21世纪初以来，长篇纪录片经历了一次大流行，并成为全球票房的重要吸引力。尽管美国电影如《华氏9·11》（2004年）或《难以忽视的真相》（2006年）最明显地证明了这一点，但一系列英国故事片也取得了重大成功（尽管不一定是商业上的），包括《黑金》（2005年）、《线的尽头》（2008年）、《自制》（2010年）、《烟雾中》（2011年）、奥斯卡提名影片《杀戮演绎》（2012年）和奥斯卡获奖影片《公民四》（2014年）。因此，英国专题纪录片产业现在是更广泛的电影和电视产业的一个组成部分，拥有不同的子行业，致力于金融，制作，发行和展览。然而，尽管它已经确立了存在，而且英国纪录片被广泛认为正在经历一个“黄金时代”（Sight & Sound， 2014年9月，第52页），但很少有学术关注支撑它的产业结构。因此，如果要理解、支持和维持英国纪录片行业目前在经济和文化上的成功，就有必要对其进行及时而迫切的研究。该项目与三个机构合作伙伴——英国电影学院（BFI）、创意英格兰（Creative England）和the Grierson——以及来自该行业主要子部门（金融、制作、发行和展览）的五个合作伙伴共同开发：BRITDOC基金会是英国纪录片融资和发行的主要经纪人；达特茅斯电影公司是英国最具影响力的纪录片制作公司之一；Dogwoof是英国领先的纪录片发行商；谢菲尔德纪录片电影节是英国最著名的纪录片电影节；英国第一家纪录片网络广播公司Yaddo于2016年由英国领先的广播平台BBC Storyville的前负责人推出。所有合作伙伴将通过一系列半结构化访谈参与研究，而来自行业子部门的合作伙伴也将参与一段时间的参与者观察。结合对主要和次要材料（学术文献、商业出版社、电影本身的密切分析）的桌面分析，这种综合方法将最好地实现三个核心目标。该项目除了将产生一系列学术成果外，还将为业界带来许多切实的应用和利益。政策建议将为BFI和创意英格兰提供基于证据的、实际适用的建议。与Doc/Fest工作坊和项目网站一起，这些活动将促进学术界和业界之间的知识交流，从而扩大了解，并努力建立一个更可持续、更创新、在文化和经济上更成功的纪录片产业。

This project aims to increase knowledge and understanding of the contemporary feature-length documentary film industry in the UK. It has three core objectives: 1) to map the industry and analyse its operation; 2) to historicise the industry's formation and the factors that have shaped its development; and 3) to investigate the criticisms and challenges the industry faces and explore how these might be addressed. Documentary has formed a major part of British film culture ever since John Grierson, the figurehead of the British Documentary Movement (1926-46), coined the term in 1926. However, with so much British scholarship focusing on that period and its achievements, subsequent developments have been marginalised. One of those developments has been the emergence of a feature documentary industry comprised of organisations dedicated to the production of feature-length (70 minutes or more) films for broadcast or theatrical exhibition that is distinct from - albeit often related to - factual or specialist factual television production).Since the beginning of the 21st century, feature-length documentaries have experienced a major upsurge in popularity and become a significant global box-office attraction. Although this is most obviously evidenced by US films such as Farenheit 9/11 (2004) or An Inconvenient Truth (2006), a range of UK feature documentaries have enjoyed significant (critical if not necessarily commercial) success, including Black Gold (2005), The End of the Line (2008), Selfmade (2010), Up in Smoke (2011), the Oscar-nominated The Act of Killing (2012), and the Oscar-winning Citizen Four (2014). As a result, the UK feature documentary industry is now an established part of the broader film and television industries, with distinct subsectors dedicated to finance, production, distribution and exhibition. Yet despite its established presence, and the fact that UK documentary is widely acknowledged to be experiencing a 'golden age' (Sight & Sound, September 2014, p. 52), little scholarly attention has been paid to the industrial structures underpinning it. There is thus a timely and urgent need to study the UK documentary industry if its current economic and cultural success is to be understood, supported and sustained. This project has been developed in association with three institutional partners - the British Film Institute (BFI), Creative England and The Grierson - as well as five partners from each of the industry's main subsectors (finance, production, distribution and exhibition): The BRITDOC Foundation is the leading broker of documentary film finance and distribution in the UK; Dartmouth Films is one of the UK's most influential documentary production companies; Dogwoof is the UK's leading documentary distributor; Sheffield Doc/Fest is the preeminent documentary film festival in the UK; and Yaddo, the UK's first documentary webcaster, was launched in 2016 by the former head of BBC Storyville, the UK's leading broadcast platform.All partners will participate in the research via a series of semi-structured interviews, while the partners from the industry's subsectors will also take part in a period of Participant Observation. Combined with desk-based analyses of primary and secondary materials (academic literature, trade press, close analysis of the films themselves), this comprehensive methodology will best enable the three core objectives to be addressed.The project will have a number of tangible applications and benefits to the industry in addition to the range of academic outputs it will generate. The policy proposals will provide the BFI and Creative England with evidence-based, practically-applicable recommendations. Together with the Doc/Fest workshops and project website, these will facilitate knowledge exchange between academia and industry that will expand understanding and work towards a more sustainable, innovative and culturally and economically successful documentary industry.