Changing the Documentary Landscape

When cable first came along, independent documentary producers thought they had finally found a solution to chronic problems of getting their work before the public, only to see the channels fill up with theatrical movies and network reruns. Home video was heralded as the next potential savior, but consolidation among rental stores made that dream quickly fade.

Today, independent producers have pinned their hopes on the slowly arriving digital channel era. The difference this time is that one important voice for the independent producers, the Independent Television Service, or ITVS, feels it finally has its feet on the ground and can focus on navigating the new digital world.

The organization was established by Congress 10 years ago with a mandate to increase diversity of public television programming and address underserved audiences, including children and minorities. New executive director Sally Jo Fifer, who starts Aug. 1, says one priority is not making the same mistakes this time in the approach to the new technology.

Since 1991, ITVS, which gets its funds through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, has dispensed nearly $58 million to support close to 400 programs. Most notable is David Sutherland’s “The Farmer’s Wife,” a 6 1/2-hour documentary about a couple trying to save their Nebraska farm and their marriage, that aired on PBS’ “Frontline.” Other productions include “The City/La Ciudad,” “An American Love Story,” Emmy winner “Girls Like Us” and “Taken In: The Lives of America’s Foster Children.” A number of ITVS programs can be seen this month on KCET; New York’s Museum of Modern Art is also running a retrospective through July 22, with other screenings in places such as Minneapolis, San Francisco and Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center.

Although some filmmakers have complained in the past that ITVS is too controlling, the San Francisco-based organization says it is unique in that it gives its filmmakers complete creative control over their work. Fifer sees ITVS’ importance in finding those filmmakers who are “passionate, persistent individuals with something they feel so strongly about that they want to communicate to the American public.” Every program ITVS has funded has landed somewhere on public television, with about one-third of its productions running in the national PBS lineup of programs, such as “Frontline,” and another 35% running in PBS’ package of optional shows, such as “P.O.V.” The remaining films are individually shopped to stations. That rare combination of freedom and support ensures ITVS will receive some 250 to 400 applications for every 35 finalists each round.

The documentary world has changed dramatically since ITVS came into being. HBO regularly supports and airs its programs, and film festivals such as Sundance, which has screened 36 ITVS programs, promote them and give them cachet, helping to turn them from “medicine into something people want to see,” says Lois Vossen, director of broadcast distribution and communications. ITVS talks regularly with HBO about finding some way to collaborate--the stumbling block always seems to be each side’s need for exclusivity, says Vossen--but fundamentally the two remain separate worlds. ITVS is dedicated to fostering “civic dialogue and public media,” says Fifer, and the fact that it gives its producers final cut is crucial. The other world, she says, “is still commercially driven,” tailoring its programs to a specific niche audience. Public TV, furthermore, is available to virtually all homes with TV, unlike pay-cable HBO.

But ITVS still had to fight for its recognition within that public TV world. Vossen recalls a meeting where a programmer stood up and suggested that a fund be created for independent productions, exactly what ITVS was doing. “We were outside the system to a greater extent than we wanted to be,” she says. Some early programs--she declines to single them out--missed because they were too experimental, and ITVS has conceded to public TV programmers on the issue of trying to make programs conform to standard broadcast lengths, of half-hour and hour increments. Independent filmmakers haven’t always been happy about those concessions on the part of ITVS, but “there are certain rules you have to play by,” Vossen says. “What we got out of playing by those rules was a larger audience.”

Broadcast lengths were the topic just this week, in fact, at a meeting of top PBS programmers. “We’re a producer-driven entity and producers want the flexibility to say, ‘My program has to be 97 minutes,’ ” says Coby Atlas, PBS’ senior vice president and co-chiefprogramming executive. “Aesthetically, I am completely sympathetic. But what do broadcasters do with the other 23 minutes? It’s not a simple thing. We have to work with filmmakers not to dictate terms but make them understand that . . . if you want to be on PBS you’re making a film that goes on a television system that, since it was created, has really done things in 60-minute increments.”

Atlas says ITVS’ role, aside from funding, is to provide access, something independent filmmakers often feel is hard to get. But because of the ITVS’ vetting process and its track record with programs like “The Farmer’s Wife,” the 1998 program that drew critical raves and high ratings to match, “we know that they’re going to present us with really good stuff,” she says. “It’s one more level of saying we know it’s good because it’s coming from them.”

That doesn’t mean, however, “that it will always work for us or work for the system,” she says. “There are only so many hours in the schedule.” That has meant some past tensions. “I think they felt we weren’t putting on enough of their programs, that we weren’t as open to independents as we should be. But in some ways that community is never going to think we did enough,” Atlas says, because there will always be someone whose show didn’t get picked up. ITVS executives say they are particularly pleased that PBS’ new president, Pat Mitchell, comes from the production community.

Still, a new PBS plan to increase the amount of national programming that PBS member stations are required to run will potentially reduce the window for ITVS programs that are shopped to individual stations, which ITVS says is a concern. Atlas says, “We’re as committed as any group can be to putting independent producers on PBS,” stressing a commitment to “P.O.V.” and “Independent Lens,” but noting that ITVS is only one door in, although an important one.

Going forward, ITVS wants to make sure independent productions still have a home at a time of intense media consolidation, “but it’s not going to be there if we don’t fight for it,” says Fifer, who came to ITVS from the Bay Area Video Coalition, where she was executive director. New partnerships are being explored, as are new outlets such as the Internet. Storytelling will still be the core, however, including finding a way to tap into the stories in communities that are still invisible to ITVS. From Middle Easterners to the Hmong to individual Native American tribes, “it’s about having as many different storytellers as possible,” says Vossen.

Here’s the remaining KCET lineup of ITVS programs:

* “Still Life With Animated Dogs,” Sunday at 10:30 p.m.

* “Outriders,” Wednesday at 10 p.m.

* “Raising Grandkids: A Love Story,” Thursday at 10 p.m.

* “The Amish and Us,” July 25 at 10 p.m.

* Movie Showcase: “The Kitchen,” “Shift” and “La Ciudad,” July 29 at 9 p.m.