Georgia’s Deborah Riley Draper & U.S. Documentary Filmmakers Shake Off The Post-Boom Gloom & Ponder Life After The Golden Age — Cannes

Being away from home allows room for perspective, and for a group of U.S.-based documentary experts who made the trip to Cannes, the glass remains half full, despite the headwinds. The closure of Participant, Showtime Docs, CNN Films scaling back and belt-tightening across the board have led many to posit that a Golden Age of documentary films has ended. A discussion in the American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival begged the question: If the Golden Age is over, what comes next?

For the assembled speakers, there was an acceptance of the challenges, but also a desire to take a long view and to look to the future….

For the filmmakers on the panel, it was really a case of ‘twas ever thus. Deborah Riley Draper, the filmmaker behind A+E series James Brown: Say It Loud said some doors are closing but that doesn’t mean others aren’t opening. “Maybe it’s about different doors,” she said. “Maybe it’s not going through the theatrical doors. Maybe we just need to go through different ones: museums doors, college campuses, impact campaigns, and create a whole new world for selling documentary.

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