We’ve all been there. You watch a film and are so moved by the story you want to make a financial contribution to the cause it espouses. But then the credits roll, you leave the cinema and the moment has passed.
Dutch filmmaker and producer Anne Marie Borsboom was so frustrated by what she calls the “gap between the audience and the film” that she set out to close it.
Her solution, ShareDoc, which she launched it 2022, was both obvious and elegant, to work with film teams to place a QR code onto the screen as soon as the film ends that audiences could scan, either to make a financial donation or to find out more about the subject of the film and/or its protagonists. In sort, to engage in Impact.
Borsboom will be in La Rochelle this week to bang the drum for her initiative which has so far benefited the subjects of 54 docs, generating more than 281,000 views and garnering more than 1500 financial donations for the films’ causes.
“My expectations were quite high when I founded ShareDoc, but what we have achieved now exceeds them,” Borsboom tells BDE. “With ShareDoc we wanted to reduce the gap between the audience and the film. But I think we have been able to completely close the gap with the films that are on the platform.”
She points to the comments of acclaimed filmmaker Reber Dosky who used ShareDoc on his Daughters of the Sun (2023). “While we as documentary makers are not allowed to reimburse our characters, ShareDoc has ensured that our Daughters of the Sun have received a wonderful contribution for their efforts,” he says. “I also noticed that the film audience that attended the Q&As really enjoyed to be able to do something concrete for the Yazidi women after watching the film.”
So far, ShareDoc has raised over €30,000 for the protagonists of Daughters of the Sun. Click here for a list of all recipients of ShareDoc support.
Borsboom further points out how ShareDoc lightened the load for Dutch broadcaster VPRO which didn’t have the person-power to deal with the raft of enquiries following the broadcast of some of its hard-hitting docs. “So they used us for their audience bonding, so to speak, as a trial. And it really worked. I hear the same story/problems of commissioning editors, such as at the BBC, when we travel around at festivals. So hopefully we can reach/help more broadcasters in the (near) future.”
“I always say to filmmakers that the platform is not the miracle that creates support, it is your audience and you need a lot of them…so when a film has a release we see the miracle happen.”
Founder Borsboom, a native of Amsterdam, also works as a filmmaker and producer (and a camerawoman). She works on ShareDoc together with Ruth Terpstra, a freelance sound technician in the film industry who has extensive experience in project innovation and management. Throughout their careers, both have engaged and interacted with film festival directors and filmmakers, which gave them “the idea to create a platform that empowers documentary makers and their audiences to give back.”
“I’m a filmmaker, so I make documentaries and I love documentaries,” Borsboom told BDE in 2023. “I was always so irritated that if you see a film at a festival or wherever, what can people do if their heart is bleeding and they want to do something? I call it the post-documentary blues. We thought these could be easy to resolve by giving them a tool they can use to donate.”
“We exist to amplify the social impact of documentaries for the protagonists/charities involved in the project,” she further explained of her non-profit Creative Europe-supported initiative. “We believe in guiding the audience towards immediate action while bridging the gap between the documentary industry and documentary lovers. It’s time to act! Our documentaries-focused platform…enables the audience to take action immediately after watching the documentary.”
Borsboom underlines how she welcomes contacts from potential ShareDoc ‘ambassadors’ who can help increase the noise around documentaries and the subjects. Contact can be made via www.share-doc.org.
