Annual VAF investment in documentary amounts to €2.4 million in total, with €1.6 million in the film fund pot (for doc features) and €800,000 in the media fund pot (doc series). This helps to finance, every year, eight majority doc productions and 8/10 minority productions. For CEO Koen Van Bockstal and Karla Puttemans, Head of Production and Talent Development, this is not enough, and the pair will be demanding that the government “double” this level of investment after the 2024 election, they tell BDE.
When you look at the CONNEXT 2023 selection, you could be forgiven for assuming that Flemish doc production is in the rudest of health, with 17 new and just about completed feature docs and series up for grabs. A further five works-in-progress and three new projects were pitched last week. But this tsunami of new doc availability is illusory, Van Bockstal and Puttemans point out, as these projects have been in the works for many years and have benefited from several different funding periods.
Right now, despite reduced access to funding possibilities, Flemish filmmakers are “punching above their weight” in terms of the quality and international reach of their films, Puttemans points out, which may be a ringing endorsement of their creative and business skills, but not the message that VAF wants to repeat when it comes to increasing their coffers. “That’s the kind of argument we don’t use towards politicians because then they say you have enough money,” Koen adds.
“[So] there must be a lot of frustration among documentary makers as well as with fiction people…but especially the documentary side of our budget is quite limited and many, many people try and get this funding. And apart from us and the tax shelter and public television, there’s not much more [funding] to get,” CEO Van Bockstal concedes of the “huge competition” and limited resources at his disposal for doc support. Hence, his desire to see significantly increased investment into VAF from the Ministries of Culture and Media from 2024.
“We’re not speaking about fortunes,” he underlines. “If we wanted the same [percentage increase] for fiction, then we’d be talking about millions of euros, but we would really make a difference with [even] €1 million more to spend on [documentaries].”
Van Bockstal and Puttemans underline the effectiveness of the CONNEXT event which ran onsite 9-10 October, and continues online until 23 October. October is, arguably, the busiest month of the year for the documentary industry. Even last week, CONNEXT was going head-to-head with the MIA market in Rome and DOK Leipzig.
“We must be doing something right,” Van Bockstal stresses. “What I think is really important about it [CONNEXT], and this is what we hear from [not only] our production teams and directors but also from the festival creators and sales agents and distributors, is the fact that you can actually look in the ‘kitchen’ from very early onwards. And I think that is what is so amazing about this event, that from the very, very early stages until it’s almost finished you can follow how projects are [progressing], and it allows people to have those conversations to connect with the people they need in the industry. So, yeah, we think it’s very effective, otherwise we wouldn’t be doing it.”
Puttemans points out that VAF has “no fixed criteria” when deciding on doc projects to invest in. “We don’t believe in just ticking the boxes and then concluding that this is the right project to support,” she says. “But of course, apart from a professional attitude, both from the producer and the author, we want to hear authentic voices and authentic approaches to interesting subjects.”
Van Bockstal underlines the ‘auteur’ aspect of the doc projects that VAF invests in. “It really needs to be a clear distinction from journalism. I mean it is obviously also a kind of journalism what they’re doing, but it’s a very personalform of journalism.”
He further stresses to filmmakers the importance of taking the end-user, ie audiences, into account when taking key production decisions. “Maybe, in the past sometimes, the maker’s approach was so idiosyncratic that they forgot about the people who need to see the film. So it’s like Kathleen McGinnis [CONNEXT moderator] said in the introduction, it’s about the makers, but also the audience.”
“That’s something we’re being more aware of at VAF right now, and also trying to give this message to our makers without trying to limit them…It’s something they have to take attention to, but it is in no way a message that they should not tell certain stories or that they should already do auto-censorship…That’s not what we are saying. What we’re saying is that they have to be also aware of ‘who do I want to reach and how am I going to do that?’ Public awareness is very important, because we’re talking about public money,” he adds.
Despite the (hopefully short-term) limits on funding, Van Bockstal nevertheless sees patches of blue sky. “The fact that we’re maybe a little bit critical also has to do with the fact that we’re quite ambitious,” he says, even if there are times when goals aren’t necessarily attainable. “But the flip side of that is that being so ambitious and putting your bar so high is that probably you jump further than if you would be less ambitious. So there’s nothing wrong with that.” Van Bockstal signs off.
