VOD platforms are now not just popular, and they don’t just receive major awards in the film industry. They have rewired the market, and are beginning to affect the form of film itself. Documentary films are made by Netflix and the Guardian, digital distribution is growing, and platforms dictate their own rules to directors and producers. What are these rules, and has the way we watch films changed? How much cinema is actually still left in the new digital product? All of this will be discussed by participants in the contemporary film process: film critics, founders and editors of online platforms with documentary content.
Kenan Aliev is an executive editor of Current Time, an independent and international news network designed to connect Russian speakers around the world. Current Time is a project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in cooperation with the Voice of America.
Flora Gregory has a career of over 30 years in independent documentary filmmaking and broadcasting; she was the founding commissioning editor of Witness, the flagship documentary strand on Al Jazeera English. She is now a consultant and works with the One World Media Organisation as executive producer of their production fund and project director of their new initiative, the Global Short Docs Forum.
Roman Stepanovych is the executive producer and co-founder of the Zaborona project, and its video programming curator. He worked as a contract producer and DOP for Vice, Viceland, Freshwater Films, and PBS Newshour. He received a Peabody award in 2018.
Lejla Dedić was born in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1972. In 1997 she graduated from London’s South Bank University, Media and Society. She has over 20 years of experience working in the media sector. She has worked at the BBC World Service Trust/Media Action, and since 2011, Lejla has been working at the Program Department of Al-Jazeera Balkans as a Program Producer, Acquisitions.
Moderator: Daria Badior, film critic and editor of the Culture section at LB.ua.
