The new season of PBS’ Independent Lens kicks off Monday, October 28 at 10p. Lois Vossen, the documentary series’ founding Executive Producer, talks about the explosion of the genre – and the secrets to success.
How have documentaries evolved over the past few years?
The biggest change in the past few years has been the tremendous influx of commercial companies now funding documentaries, both shorts and feature length. When I started out it was HBO, ITVS, and a lot of non-profit funders like Ford, MacArthur, and other foundations. Now docs are being supported by the big streaming companies, and legacy journalism outlets like The New Yorker and The New York Times, and commerce businesses like Airbnb and Red Bull. It’s an explosion of funders, an explosion of content, an explosion of exhibition opportunities, and hopefully an increase in the number of people watching all this great work.
What film do you think will have the most impact on the audience this season?
So much depends on what’s happening in the world when a film hits. Not to mention the question of impact, which means more than audience size, extensive press coverage or winning awards. We’ve noticed an increase of stories bubbling up across the country that connect to criminal justice, so that’s definitely a theme to watch in films like Always in Season and Bedlam. We’re very excited about a feedback platform that we have been working on called DocSCALE, which helps us understand the impact Independent Lens films have on our audiences. Next year, around this time, we’ll be able to gauge exactly what type of impact documentary films have.
What is your dream documentary project?
Oh, there are a lot of those including several we have in production. The secret sauce usually includes a filmmaker who has a big idea even if they’re not yet sure how to pull it off, about a topic that forces us to examine what we think we already know. One of the things I like most about most of the filmmakers we work with is that they’re 150% committed to telling a story that humanizes an issue. Their determination to expose a wrong or elevate a right is always humbling. Each season of Independent Lens, on PBS, has its own dream project within, it is our hope to have audiences tune-in to find a special film that is significant to them.
