Harnessing the power of film to tell investigative stories can be risky for documentary film producers. In 2009, the documentary Bananas! took a critical look at a Dole Food banana plantation, where pesticide use was allegedly making workers sterile. Dole sued filmmaker Fredrik Gertten for defamation and sought to ban further showing of the film, which premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival.
The lawsuit was later dropped, but the whole ordeal is just one example of how documentary filmmakers who challenge powerful organizations can face serious challenges, and even dangers, from corporations or individuals whose interests are at stake.
It was one example in a new report by The Center for Media & Social Impact at American University, out Thursday, showing that when documentaries broach power, it matters if the film’s creator identifies as a journalist or a filmmaker. It matters not just for the sake of rhetoric and categorization, but in a very real, concrete way, because those who identify as filmmakers rather than journalists have a smaller range of places to turn to, or networks to rely on in the face of certain risks, the report shows.
“Dangerous Documentaries: Reducing Risk when Telling Truth to Power,” is built on 53 interviews of people within documentary film production revealing how cultural divisions keep filmmakers and journalists within the world of documentary films from developing a dialogue. In an attempt to change that, the Center for Media and Social Impact has compiled a list of advice for best practices that its creators hope will become an expanding, crowdsourced resource for filmmakers and journalists.
“Independent documentaries are more and more important as trusted sources of information for American citizens. As this genre takes on greater importance, it is also important to understand the landscape today for making such work,” says Patricia Aufderheide, professor at American University, and the report’s principal investigator. “We discovered that both journalists and filmmakers have cultivated a rich and sometimes informal body of knowledge about different aspects of journalistic documentaries.”
The boundaries between the art of filmmaking and journalism are already blurred. Netflix just won its first duPont-Columbia Award for investigative journalism with documentary film Virunga about a national park in the eastern Congo. The film, also nominated for an Academy Award, was originally intended as a nature documentary but turned into an investigation of power and corruption when filmmaker Orlando von Einsiedel found himself in the midst of a civil war.
As the popularity of documentary films really started picking up a few years ago, some have even suggested that they are taking the place of investigative journalism.
While thoughts about ethics, values, and purpose are often the same among filmmakers and journalists, cultural differences in training and language keep them separate, according to the report. That’s a grave disadvantage to filmmakers, who have experienced pushback from corporations and authorities, public smear campaigns, and even physical threats in response to their work but who lack the resources available to journalists in tackling such challenges. Filmmakers are often unfamiliar with journalistic support resources—such as the Society of Professional Journalists or The Poynter Institute—and often don’t have the benefit of journalistic networks, the report concludes. While journalists often have discussions with colleagues and editors about risks, and rely on established institutional ethics codes, filmmakers usually work in small teams and get final cut on their work.
But it’s not just filmmakers who would benefit from an open dialogue. The report finds that the question of objectivity creates the greatest divide between filmmakers and journalists. While the former often prioritize aesthetics and story, and aim for their work to be fair but not necessarily balanced, many journalists struggle with the notion that stylistic or methodological choices can greatly alter the end product. Journalists are just beginning this conversation about choices of framework and interpretation, and taking ownership of those choices, the report says, and this is where there’s much to be learned from the art of filmmaking.
“That’s something we’re very aware of as filmmakers, the art of it,” says Marjan Safinia, president of the International Documentary Association. “There’s a lot to learn [for journalists] in just being aware of not just accounting facts, but telling a story. Some of those choices, a traditional journalist may not have thought through.” She adds that as journalists increasingly need the skills to work in video, there’s a whole new toolset to master when producing visual stories. “Dialogue is imperative,” she says. “At the end of the day, we’re all trying to do the same thing: shedding light on our world and making more sense of it.”
Lene Bech Sillesen is a CJR Delacorte Fellow. Follow her on Twitter at @LeneBechS.