Doc Next Talk

At the Doc Next Talk of the European Cultural Foundation (ECF), representatives of organisations dedicated to the discovery of new, young talents in filmmaking were invited to discuss the current problems of their trade. How to deal with the rapid evolution of so-called ‘New Media’? How to find promising new filmmakers, and how to create economic spheres in which they can prosper?

Though announced as a talk show, the gathering turned out to be rather a showcase for the protagonists of the industry to present themselves and their undertakings. Host Leena Pasanen, executive producer of Finnish Television (YLE), gave the relevant information right at the beginning: in the filmmaking industry, creating networks is a sine qua non. And it is in the logic of networking that every act of speech you make is always to a certain degree a self-presentation: your achievements justify the relevance of what you have to say. Noel Goodwin of the British Film Institute’s youth programme talked about an upcoming festival, Patricia Aufderheide from the Film and Media School in Washington, D.C., announced the publishing of her new book and Stan van Engelen presented his innovative broadcasting format Metropolis TV.

The discussion was marked by a strange mixture of glorification and panic. The immense possibilities of digital film production and distribution entail a whole new world of opportunities for filmmakers and talent scouts to find each other and communicate. Yet technical developments permanently seem to be getting out of hand: too many films, too many platforms, too complex relationships. We create the machines, then we adapt to them.

The main commodities on display were youth and talent: youth as the arbitrary criterion by which to qualify something as “new”, talent as the good on sale. But here one encounters a paradoxical situation: since the 70s and 80s cultural industries have heavily relied on a youth culture characterized by a certain anti-approach to the established forms of artistic production. A speaker in the audience mentioned Punk, which of course is a primary example of a movement born in opposition to the status quo of the contemporary distribution of power. Punk opened up previously unthinkable spaces for alternative economic and artistic endeavours. However, nowadays the situation has changed: the cultural industries are established economic fields hunting down the latest species of artistic products, and they are constantly craving the new. Wherever a young filmmaker is going, she or he can be sure that the industry and the university are already there, desperately waiting for something to justify their professional existence.

Of course, nowadays we are all aware of how deeply our economic system has became integrated into the cultural realm. The saddening part is to see in the movies of the selected ‘young talents’ (www.vimeo.com/groups/ecf) how much they shape their visual style in relation to pre-existing economic expectations. But also this is not new: the cultural industry is a mechanism involving the forced adaptation of promising artists to pre-existing modes of cultural representation. Truly paradoxical is that inside this logic, the ‘new’ is a given expectation shaping the way the industry looks out for talent, a spinning circle of self-fulfilling prophecies.

The selected films gave ample proof of this dilemma: examples of a ‘newness’ fitting seamlessly into an old argument. If art has a certain aspect of experimentation to it, the trying out of alternative views towards a situation understood as oppressing and unjust, the Doc Next Talk gave proof of how little space is left for real creativity. Hope might be where Doc Next did not look, in the alternative.

By Nino Klingler