Financing and Production

Abstract

Focusing on documentary financing, two forms of organisation appear, an institutionally managed and a private self-managed mode of production initiated in response to the chronic lack of production support for documentary from the industry and public sectors. Filmmakers take concrete actions to resist an instrumental framing of documentary film under a range of social functions and communication discourses in an ongoing struggle for artistic expression. Independence becomes visible in a series of tactical adaptations where standardised media practice is displaced by the formation of cooperative social alliances, the reduced significance of capital in the production process and non-monetary rewards. These re-worked practices implicate the mode of documentary inquiry, textual aesthetics and political position taking to render possible the expression of representational and semiotic concerns within institutional production environments.