A leading director has warned that documentary film-making in the UK is in a state of crisis owing to a dearth of resources and risk-averse commissioning.
Sophie Fiennes said audiences are losing out because the sector is now suffering from an “absolute lack of resources” and commissioners who are wary of taking risks.
She said: “There is an abdication of public service broadcast for this work. They want to make ‘factual entertainment’ and compete with streamers and get the best possible viewing figures. This compromises complex, challenging, inspiring work.”
Fiennes, the sister of the actors Ralph and Joseph, has made a series of acclaimed documentaries on the singer Grace Jones, the artist Anselm Kiefer and the choreographer Michael Clark, among others.
She also directed her brother Ralph in Four Quartets, TS Eliot’s poetic masterpiece translated from stage to screen, which opens in US cinemas on Friday.
But she has struggled to raise funding for her latest production on the theatre company Cheek by Jowl.
She had wanted to document their unique approach by filming their two-week acting workshop on Macbeth, to show “what is normally a hidden relationship between the performers that happens in a rehearsal-room”.
Despite her record, her submitted proposal received a one-line “not for us” response from a big broadcaster, which did not ask to see any footage.
She said: “They want famous faces … It’s going to be very hard for creatively ambitious film-makers … Cheek by Jowl were able to fund the production and shooting of the two-week masterclass, so it’s ‘in the bag’, but bringing this to fruition is a complex and intricate process – and that company lost its Arts Council funding. So it’s across different fields that the framework is falling away.
“We take the risk as film-makers to make the films we make. There’s no infrastructure which supports that. There’s very few places to go … We’re like water: we find a way.”
Part of the problem is that commissioners find it easier to rely on fame, celebrity and tried-and-tested approaches, she added: “They create ‘cookie-cutter’ formulae, which means they don’t have to worry about a singular vision of a film-maker who is creative … But it takes trial and error to create and that accumulation of experience is undervalued.
“There are many film-makers who don’t want to talk about it because it will make them look like they’re party-poopers and they won’t get the funding.”
She has been funding her work by teaching her craft: “For people wanting to become nonfiction film-makers, it quickly becomes clear that it is an extremely precarious proposition. Some of the people I have been teaching at University College London and the National Film and Television School are Oxbridge postgraduates – potentially strong film-makers – but it’s hard to see a way forward for them and others.”
She mentioned, for example, that the feature documentary on the British fashion designer John Galliano by the Oscar-winner Kevin Macdonald was entirely funded from France.
Macdonald, who also made a documentary on the singer Whitney Houston, said: “I never tried to sell my Galliano documentary in the UK. But yes it is true, there are fewer options now for independent one-off documentaries that aren’t super commercial – not true crime or celeb – because the traditional broadcasters have less money than they did. But there are still opportunities – with Sky, for instance, who are looking for mainstream British documentaries.”
Jacqui Morris, who made an acclaimed documentary on the dancer Rudolf Nureyev, will be seeking funding in the UK for her new documentary, about the Ukrainian rock band Okean Elzy.
She said: “On the one hand, streamers seemed to be the saviour of documentaries. But now all they’re after really is sensationalist productions about serial killers. Serious feature documentaries are possibly suffering because of that. I’ve never had any help from the UK documentary film industry.”
Fiennes lamented the loss of a tradition going back to John Grierson, widely regarded as the father of documentaries, with classics such as Night Mail of 1936, about the London-to-Scotland postal train: “We have a proud nonfiction broadcasting history in this country, but since the changes in attitude from broadcasters plus Brexit, and the loss of European funding models, it is a depressing horizon. We’re living in a country with a government that doesn’t really understand – if I can be generous – how to support the independent cultural sector.”
