Clare Stewart, who previously headed up the BFI London and Sydney Film Festivals joins Sheffield after a stormy late summer during which former director Cíntia Gil stepped down (the festival cited ‘artistic differences’) and the programming team published an open letter highly critical of Doc Fest’s board of trustees (see BDE story).
On Stewart’s appointment as Interim CEO, the October 26 festival statement stressed how “she will work with the Board and senior team to forge a new, long-term strategy for Sheffield DocFest.” The festival also announced that renowned doc maker Asif Kapadia would join as Guest Curator, as well as later appointments (in January 2022) of former IDFA programmer Raul Niño Zambrano as Head of Film Programmes and Francesca Panetta as Alternate Realities.
“It’s a challenging and complex role to come into,” Stewart tells Business Doc Europe. “Cíntia Gil had the courage of her programming convictions and I respect that, just as I hold in high regard the remaining team who continued to deliver Sheffield DocFest during two pandemic editions, ensuring the festival’s legacy is secure and protected. There is a responsibility to navigate that space with grace, but also to re-energise it, bring warmth and perspective, and a direction of travel that will propel a much-beloved festival into the future.”
“I think it’s very much from a structural perspective because I’m coming in as CEO, rather than festival director,” Stewart adds of her new role. “But I think fundamentally the real challenge, and it’s quite different from approaching a festival pre-pandemic, is thinking about what the [future] shape of the festival needs to be.”
All festivals, she argues, must take heed of the opportunities that online has offered up in terms of “reach, awareness and access.” She adds, however, a rejoinder. “How do we retain some of those new learnings and build a model that takes all of that into consideration, as well as the really palpable desire that we’re hearing from our industry delegates, from filmmakers and artists, for that opportunity to reconnect in person.”
Stewart underlines that she is the Interim CEO, not Festival Director, but nevertheless addresses future programming considerations. This includes cutting back on the numbers of both programme and MeetMarket selections. She refers to “pulling back a little bit on the scale [to deliver]… a proper volume of impact.”
“I think there’s an interest in reclaiming some elements of past USP around breadth and balance in terms of program and project selection,” Stewart adds. “That is something that Doc Fest has been hugely regarded for in past additions. And we are definitely seeing a very strong appetite again. Going […] to that question of connectivity, we’re seeing a very strong appetite from the US in particular to participate in person.”
She elaborates on what she means by breath and balance. “It’s really about what gap there is in the festival ecosystem that Sheffield Doc Fest can fill in programming terms. I think we have such a broad array of productions to consider. In the European context, there’s definitely been a movement towards a more artistically stylistic kind of doc which – you know – those are the films that we love, but they’re not the full expression of the doc ecosystem.”
“When I talk about breadth, we are talking about everything from really urgent topical films that have a more journalistic approach,” she continues. “We’re talking about films that have a really popular appeal in terms of the way that they position their subject matter. And we’re also talking about films that are not easily defined and that sometimes fall through the gaps, [films] that might be rough around the edges, very indie in their tone and texture. So I think it’s breadth and balance in terms of style, but it’s also breadth and balance in terms of production elements as well.”
Stewart argues that additions to the Sheffield creative team, in the shape of former IDFA programmer Raul Niño Zambrano and immersive Francesca Panetta, will help in “shaping that creative component of the festival.”
She further comments on the appointment of Asif Kapadia as Guest Curator: “He is someone who has a deep love and a deep knowledge of cinema in its full breadth, and what has been fascinating about our conversation so far in terms of his curatorial input has just been to hear him talk in such meaningful ways about the films and filmmakers that have influenced his practice,” Stewart stresses.
“From a curatorial point of view, what excites me about his contribution (without revealing too much at this juncture) is that he is also very interested across all the elements of the festival. So we are talking about components that will be in the film program section. We’re talking about components that will be in Talks and Sessions. We’re talking about other ways in which he engages with some of our youth initiatives, around the youth jury and our youth reporter scheme and so forth. And he’s also cooking up something quite exciting in the filmmaking arena as well. So what I think is really interesting about the sensibility that he’s bringing to the table is that as a lover of festivals, as well as films, he understands what it means to create in all aspects of what a festival delivers on.”
Given the seismic changes to the doc industry (as well as all our lives) over the past two years, what has specifically informed Stewart’s approach to her job during the run-up to the fest in June?
“I think one of the things that I would observe about the last couple of years in the documentary film space is that filmmakers have pushed more into working with archive and animation in ways that are really inventive and stylistically exciting and that have really pushed the form,” she answers. “Creatively, I find that very exciting because it’s a space that has responded, found creative solutions to the restrictions that the pandemic has put on all of us in terms of how we live and how we make. What is interesting in terms of Sheffield Doc Fest is our industry program for this year I also see as being a really enlightening moment for doc makers to come back to a marketplace context with those projects.”
“What I find also very exciting in terms of the shift of the last three, four or five years are those questions that people are asking themselves more generally about. We’ve seen this come out of the MeToo movement. We’ve seen it come about because of the Black Lives Matter movement and a raft of other mobilizations around things to do with representation and identity,” Stewart continues. “We are also asking ourselves ‘what is it I don’t know?’… [which] is a question that leads itself to deeper exploration of things and topics. At which point the documentary form brings itself into play in a very, very potent way.”
Film Programme entries: Standard deadline: 11 February 2022 Late entries: 4 March 2022
Alternate Realities entries: Standard deadline: 11 February 2022. Late entries: 4 March 2022
Marketplace entries: Deadline: 21 February 2022
Alternate Realities commissions: Deadline: 27 February
