On 7-8 February the B2B Doc – Baltic to Black Sea Documentary Network will thrash out ways to effect change for docmakers (and the industry infrastructures that serve them) within the war-torn and turbulent countries of Central and Eastern Europe, most notably Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus. The event is named Documentary Filmmaking in a Period of Crisis – New Ideas for a Better Future.
The conference will take place in Tallinn, Estonia to reflect the Baltic region’s status “as a positive example of post-Soviet countries that have developed national film institutes and public service television,” the programme notes underline. The agenda is wide-ranging but at its core is the local finance and distribution of home-grown content.
“There’s now things happening within the film communities [whereby] they form their own organizations and start demanding better, more transparent systems, but they can’t demand a hell of a lot of money because all these countries are under pressure economically,” says B2B Doc co-founder and event moderator Malcolm Dixelius of the ground-up response of filmmakers from the countries under scrutiny during the conference.
“The second important thing is distribution,” he continues. “There is no distribution. We’ve seen some of the filmmakers we’ve worked with have their films screened all over Europe. They have won prizes at prestigious festivals [but] no screening in their own countries of origin. That is so sad. I mean, it’s sad for them, and it’s sad for the audience. So we would really love to see some initiatives somehow that we can co-operate with the film institutes or public service television, to find platforms where particularly the younger generation who are [for example] going to rebuild Ukraine and start anew. They are the preferred target audience, of course, for documentary film.”
B2B Doc Head of Operations Alex Shiriaieff explains the geofocus of the conference, ie the highly unsettled countries of Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus. “We have two pure dictatorships. I mean, what kind of changes would we expect in, let’s say, Belarus and Azerbaijan?” he asks, and while there are emerging democracies in the other countries, there are other issues to contend with, he alleges, such as local corruption. “They finance projects which go to the friends and relatives of the decision makers in those funds, or they just support the production of the so-called national films or typically patriotic films.”
Even Ukraine under its current progressive leadership is not beyond criticism, says Shiriaieff. “In Ukraine, after this Maidan revolution, they managed to create this very open and transparent system to where filmmakers could apply. And the whole process of the application and the project selection was open. That’s why they managed to support a lot of strong films. So the film industry in Ukraine started to believe that this would work.”
“But after the shift of power, during the last election, when President Zelenskyy came to power, who is himself from the film and TV industry, he started unfortunately to restructure this total transparent and open system,” Shiriaieff continues.
“But the film community in Ukraine, they have formed themselves,” the B2B Doc Operational Chief adds. “They are now protesting against it…In Ukraine and in Georgia, the film community are trying now to affect somehow the process of political decision making in the film policy of those countries. So this is also great that we have people whom we can work with in those countries.”
Another potential boon to the region, at least from a transparency perspective, is the candidacy of Ukraine and Moldova for EU membership. “It means they have to adhere to…a transparent system so there’s more opportunities to work with them,” says B2B Doc’s Dixelius of future international co-pro collaboration. “Also, Georgia has a sort of halfway ticket, not quite as [much], but these three countries are the ones where we most likely can influence the situation.”
Of course, the irony of Ukraine is while the world’s attention is focused on its filmmakers and industry, Ukrainian producers have no access to local funds. The country has an experienced and savvy production sector who understand as well as anybody how to co-operate with filmmakers beyond Ukrainian borders, much of it down to B2B Doc activities in pitch and co-production training, “but because of the war, they don’t have any local money in Ukraine to invest into the international co-productions,” says Shiriaieff, adding how Ukrainian producers still need to keep their national identity, despite being unable to source local funding for their films.
A quite different problem afflicts the Belarusian independent film community, he adds. “99% of Belarusian documentary filmmakers are living in exile right now, since 2020. They don’t have any access to any money. I mean, they cannot apply. At the same time, the countries that usually supported Belarus, like the Czech Republic or Poland, Ukraine or Germany, now because of the Russian/Ukrainian war they’re not providing any support to Belarusian filmmakers…The problem cannot be solved only within the film industry. We have to find political solutions to provide the support for filmmakers from these countries.”
Highlights of the conference include an opening debate in which institutional representatives from the states affected by affected by war, social and political conflict, will discuss the role of their respective film bodies. Panelists include Valentina Iusuphodjaev (CNC Moldova), Maya Tchilashvili (Georgian National Film Centre), Iryna Kyporenko (Ukrainian Institute), Volia Chajkouskaya (Belarusian Film Academy) and Melikset Karapetyan (Armenian National Cinema Centre).
Later, German Films’ Simone Baumann, DAE’s Brigid O’Shea and Zdenek Blaha of IDF will discuss “an integrated European film market: a vision for the future,” while Estonian Sergei Trofimov (producer, distributor and former commissioning editor at ERR and Current Time TV) will investigate/explain/analyse how to integrate public-service television in the process of financing and distribution of documentary films.Representatives from the following institutions are invited and will participate in the conference: Armenian National Cinema Centre, Association of Swedish Film and TV Producers, Belarusian Independent Film Academy, CNC Moldova, Documentary Association of Europe, Documentary Association of Georgia, Estonian Film Institute, Estonian public broadcaster ERR, Georgian National Film Centre, German Films, Institute of Documentary Film, Latvian National Film Centre, Ukrainian Institute and Watch Docs Poland.
