Producing at Festivals: Opportunities, Drifts and Trends (Sometimes Triggered) of Iberoamerican Documentary Film

Abstract

Festivals have become an alternative funding circuit for certain contemporary cinema since 2000. Although some of the main supporting programs are devoted firstly to fiction films, documentary projects have been included in their selections since the beginning. What is more, documentary films have been increasing their presence in non-themed funding initiatives since late 1990s. In the same way, a specialized circuit focused on documentary films has been progressively developed. In this context, Ibero-American productions have showed their importance in both documentary and general supporting programs.These initiatives are based on economic grants as well as on workshops and seminars where funders, producers and creators from different territories coincide. In this way, they constitute a transnational space that allows filmmakers to relate each other and dialogue among them. Many times, these encounters give different kinds of film (co)productions as result. This article analyses Ibero-American documentary film in this context. It focuses on funding opportunities in order to highlight drifts that take place at different levels in this arena: the novelty of some supporting programs in relation to previous models; initiatives that clearly affects creative processes; and the importance of the temporalities and the territory in the resulting films.