\n<\/p>\n
\n\tJournalists and filmmakers and cinema itself are facing growing political threats and increasing difficulties, according to film industry reps at the Zurich Summit on Saturday.<\/p>\n
\n\tTaking part in a discussion on the political turmoil engulfing the entertainment industry at the Zurich Film Festival industry event were Kathleen Fournier of Charlotte Street Films, producer of the Julian Assange doc \u201cThe Six Billion Dollar Man;\u201d David Unger, CEO of Artist International Group; Nathana\u00ebl Karmitz, chairman of Paris-based MK2; and Stephen Follows, film data researcher and consultant for Guinness World Records.<\/p>\n
\n\tOffering a stark example of the darkening climate for filmmakers was Fournier\u2019s experience in producing Eugene Jarecki\u2019s \u201cThe Six Billion Dollar Man,\u201d which screens at the Zurich Film Festival.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cAs a filmmaker, as a producer, there is substantial risk sometimes involved for me and my team personally,\u201d Fournier said, explaining how she moved with her family to Berlin to work on the documentary, which tells \u201cthe definitive story of Wikileaks,\u201d due to the potentially explosive footage they had obtained.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe didn\u2019t feel comfortable editing in the U.K. or in the U.S. because there are laws there and ways to seize footage, and journalists aren\u2019t protected in the way they are in Germany. So we moved the entire production and editing team to Berlin, and that was really inspiring and very interesting \u2026 until Gaza happened and we started to see that even Germany, with all of its civic mindedness, is fallible to ideology and to erosion. So it was very interesting to see journalists challenged there in real time and to react to that.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tShe added: \u201cI think we really do need a mechanism in place to protect journalists. And that\u2019s what our film is about.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tFournier also noted how the changing political climate and growth of streaming platforms have impacted the prospects of certain types of documentaries.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cIt used to be that if you won an Emmy, won the Sundance Grand Jury prize, won a Grierson Award, you would have no trouble getting your films made. And we won all of those with many of our films. I\u2019m not complaining that doors have closed, but what I\u2019m seeing is that as documentaries move to streaming platforms, many of the political and more nuanced and difficult or subjective documentaries did not make that leap.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe sort of documentaries you now find on streaming platforms tend to be historical \u2013 there\u2019s the past, so it flattens the stakes in a way because those people are gone, that time is finished \u2013 or it\u2019s true crime or it\u2019s often very sort of personal stories. So it is interesting trying to make a film at this particular juncture as the media landscape is changing fundamentally, dramatically.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tYet life has always been difficult, Fournier added. \u201cEvery epoch has its challenges, and I think we as a generation, my generation, inherited a lot of the fruits of other people\u2019s labor in the civil rights movement, in terms of civil liberties. Now it\u2019s up to us to stand up for those and really investigate what it means as some of those rights and liberties get challenged or taken away.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tDespite winning this year\u2019s Golden Eye Special Jury Prize at Cannes and a \u201cphenomenal\u201d screening in Zurich, \u201cThe Six Billion Dollar Man\u201d has yet to land a U.S. distributor.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cWe\u2019ve been dancing with lots of partners and talking. People love the film, but it\u2019s a difficult film. \u2026 It talks about Trump, it talks about the deep state. It uses all the facts that come from various court cases. It\u2019s an incredibly, deeply researched film.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tOffering a sharp critique of the industry, Follows argued that the onus was on companies to exhibit greater courage, as was the case in the 1970s, which saw much braver, more diverse and interesting storytelling than what was produced in subsequent decades.<\/p>\n
\n\t\u201cThe film industry is fundamentally, as a business and as an ecosystem, risk averse and scared and cowardly. \u2026 It\u2019s absolutely cowardly that they\u2019re not releasing these films. You think about how \u2018Bowling for Columbine\u2019 got media releases and things like that. So this needs agitators. If we leave it and don\u2019t actively do things, the industry acts in horrible ways. The reason Me Too had to happen is because when left to our own devices as an industry, we didn\u2019t police, we didn\u2019t sort out.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tWhile stressing that politics and cinema have always been very linked, Karmitz said: \u201cWhat is new is that we ask this question, and we ask this type of question because culture is under attack and cinema is under attack.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tKarmitz said that while the press was talking less and less about films, far-right accounts on the social media platform X were systematically attacking \u201ceverything about movies and French movies.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tThe far-right has become the major voice discussing cinema on X, he added. \u201cIs this a problem? Yes, it is, because the question is, how do we organize to fight back?\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\tKarmitz noted that many of MK2\u2019s cinema events and discussions attract contentious reactions from far-right critics.<\/p>\n
\n\tLooking at the broader situation in France, he also stressed the recent legal challenge faced by the CNC national film center in Parliament and the ongoing right-wing assault on national television.<\/p>\n
\n\tUnger, for his part, expressed optimism that the climate would eventually improve. He recalled how earlier films by the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Stanley Kramer \u201cwere unbelievably controversial\u201d in their day. Kramer\u2019s 1967 classic \u201cGuess Who\u2019s Coming to Dinner,\u201d for example, no longer causes the great ruckus it once did.<\/p>\n
\n\tHe also underscored the importance of such a discussion at the Zurich Summit. \u201cI see that this register\u2019s here. And I think for us to have this dialogue here is important, because it\u2019s forcing all of us in this room to kind of examine where the business is and how we can help shape it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Journalists and filmmakers and cinema itself are facing growing political threats and increasing difficulties, according to film industry reps at the Zurich Summit on Saturday. Taking part in a discussion on the political turmoil engulfing the entertainment industry at the Zurich Film Festival industry event were Kathleen Fournier of Charlotte Street Films, producer of the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24337,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[7581,186,6829,1545,1913,14794,8228],"class_list":{"0":"post-24336","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-cinema","9":"tag-climate","10":"tag-hostile","11":"tag-industry","12":"tag-political","13":"tag-reps","14":"tag-threatening"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24336","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24336"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24336\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24336"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24336"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24336"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}