Show me the Money: Alternative funding for factual
@ the Televisual Intelligent Factual Festival

About the Panel
A new breed of filmmakers are turning their backs on the traditional TV networks and looking for new sources of finance and support – with growing success. Film funding from sympathetic non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is a well established model in the US, where network cash has been difficult to find for socially conscious documentaries for years. Now filmmakers in the UK are cottoning on. This session explores the potential benefits and drawbacks of alternative funding sources for documentary, including development agencies, asking what filmmakers get from the relationship. Says Robert West from Working Films, the US-based non-profit organisation which matches up filmmakers with NGOs: “NGOs bring you distribution of information amongst their memberships, management of the screenings, plus discussion when the lights go up.” But the growth of NGO funding has highlighted the issue of who has editorial control. The danger is that having seen the rough cut the funding body will ask for it to be recut with a different editorial slant that fits more closely with the organisation’s agenda. NGO involvement may also be a turn off for some broadcasters, given their stricter requirements for guarantees of journalistic objectivity. Part of the answer is in teaming up the right projects with the right NGOs which respect the vision of the filmmaker. Partnerships work best when both sides are flexible, states West. “Making a film is always a negotiation. The key thing is for everybody to be very clear at the beginning what the relationship is and what they will get out of it.”

Speakers
• Chloe Baird-Murray, creative relationship manager, Amnesty International
• Beadie Finzi, director, BritDoc
• Hugo Heppell, head of production, Screen Yorkshire
• Robert West, co-founder and executive director, Working Films
• Chaired by Christopher Hird, Dartmouth Films

About the Event
The Televisual Intelligent Factual Festival is the leading forum for business information and debate for ALL factual television filmmakers, business executives and project leaders.

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