sex hikaye

Film Financing: Documentaries

„God Bless the Camera!”

09 March, 2005 - filmhu
In November documentary filmmakers sent a statement to the Motion Picture Public Foundation – the third one in a row. This aims to the attract attention of decisionmakers to the problems of the neglected documetary genre. According to József Böjte, Sándor Buglya and András Kisfaludy the malfunctioning distribution system is equally responsible for the current crisis as the indifferent TV stations.

The participants of the panel were:
 
József Böjte (producer, director)
Sándor Buglya (director, the head of the largest documentary workshop, the Dunatáj Foundation)  
András Kisfaludy (director, MADE – Association of Hungarian Documetary Filmmakers)

According to the participants of the panel, similarly to feature films, documetaries would need certain guarantees, since the annual support they receive doesn’t even reach the budget of a mid-size Hungarian feature film.

According to the Film Law, not only film production should be in focus, the support of the entire film infrastructure should be provided. However, documetaries have received no support from this infrastructure subsidy (given for workshop, pre-production and distrubution support).

In the meantime, several workshops are on the verge of bankrupcy, or are officially being liquidated and are threatened by immediate closure. At the same time, these workshops would have an important role both in terms of dramaturgy and financing. If a workshop was entitled to receive support, it could have access to working capital to finance preproduction and distribution, and could serve as an advance for retroactive finacing.

Documentary makers say that their works have bigger success abroad than in Hungary.

99% of documentaries are shown on television, so it would be crucial to have a documetary workshop at every public service TV station. Filmmaker say that it would be worth strengthening this genre because certain successul pieces could have great influence.

Although documentaries have little publicity these days, if a film is shown in prime time, it is usually received favorably.  One of the messages was: „God bless your camera!”, Buglya recalls.

The interest in the genre is present, as most educated viewers prefer watching works that focus on the role and conflicts of everyday people in society to action films, entertainment programs and game shows.