BBC and BRITDOC announce three-year partnership
The BBC and BRITDOC Foundation today announced a three year co-funding and engagement strategy partnership, in which the BBC is recognised as the exclusive UK broadcast partner of BRITDOC.
Published: 18 January 2017
Storyville has a proud tradition of showcasing the very best in international film-making and I’m delighted that we will be working with BRITDOC to develop a fantastic slate of new films for our audience
The partnership will see BRITDOC co-funding up to four BBC documentaries a year, playing out primarily as Storyville films, and provides the opportunity for the BBC to acquire the TV rights or stand-alone iPlayer rights of new and existing BRITDOC-supported projects. In addition, as field leaders in documentary audience and community engagement, BRITDOC will provide expertise to the BBC on a select number of films, a specialism the non-profit has been developing in the last eight years.
Clare Sillery, Head of Commissioning, Documentaries, says: “We are very excited to be entering into this partnership with BRITDOC. The BBC has long been a home for outstanding international feature documentaries, from Blackfish to A Syrian Love Story, and we believe this new partnership will enable a great new slate of films and filmmakers to develop.”
The partnership will be editorially led by Kate Townsend, Commissioning Editor of Storyville.
Kate Townsend says: “Storyville has a proud tradition of showcasing the very best in international film-making and I’m delighted that we will be working with BRITDOC to develop a fantastic slate of new films for our audience.”
Patrick Holland, Channel Editor at BBC Two and formerly Head of BBC Documentaries, initiated the partnership. He says: “BRITDOC are at the forefront of international documentary development. From Ping Pong to Virunga they have pioneered new ways of engaging with audiences and I am delighted to be supporting this partnership.”
Jess Search, Chief Executive, BRITDOC says: “Working in partnership with the world’s leading public service broadcaster has been a long-held ambition for BRITDOC. It’s a great honour to share our expertise with the BBC and help documentary films flourish on television, the most democratic of all visual storytelling mediums. We need great documentaries to help us understand the world now more than ever before.”
Rob Berkeley, Project Lead for Audience Accountability at the BBC, has already joined the BRITDOC Foundation board and will also play a leading role.
BRITDOC supports over 20 international documentary films a year and has already partnered with BBC Storyville on two Sundance Film Festival films, both of which were Academy shortlisted: Pussy Riot - A Punk Prayer, and (T)error, about an FBI undercover investigation.
Sundance 2017 will see the premiere of the latest collaboration, Trophy, a Pulse film about big-game hunters. All of these three films have been enabled through the Bertha BRITDOC Journalism Fund. BBC documentaries, Notes On Blindness and Seven Songs For A Long Life, have also been supported by Bertha BRITDOC outreach and engagement funding.
The BBC has a strong track record of showing acclaimed and award-winning feature documentaries. The Storyville strand has won four Oscars, five Baftas, 15 Griersons, three Peabodys, and three International Emmys since its inception 17 years ago. In the past year, BBC Documentaries has won a number of awards, including Best Documentary (Domestic) for How To Die: Simon’s Choice; and two RTS Craft & Design Awards, two Prix Italia Awards and the Liberty - Human Rights Arts Award for Exodus: Our Journey To Europe.
Similarly, in 11 years of working with independent documentary filmmakers, BRITDOC has supported films that have received five Oscar nominations and one win, a Bafta, four Emmys, four Griersons, a Peabody, a Prix Italia and 12 awards at Sundance film festival.
BRITDOC’s expertise in outreach and engagement has evolved through initiatives such as Doc Academy, a nationwide education programme in over 1,000 UK secondary schools that encourages the use of documentary film within formal learning, using specially created classroom guides by teachers for teachers for films such as the BBC documentary Project Nim, the Sundance winner Afghan Star and He Named Me Malala, about Pakistani education campaigner, Malala Yousafzai.
In addition, BRITDOC has developed multiple and varied partnerships to extend the reach of documentaries through Good Pitch, a live event which brings together documentary filmmakers with foundations, NGOs, brands and media around leading social and environmental issues. Since the initial event in London in 2008, the event has been held 31 times in cities around the world, involving over 3,000 different organisations, including New York, Nairobi, Sydney, Mumbai, Taipei, Chicago, Buenos Aires, Oslo and Stockholm. In 2017 the event goes to Copenhagen, Jakarta and Miami.
BBC Head of Partnerships Jane Ellison says: “BRITDOC’s collaborative approach is an opportunity to create new connections with documentary makers in the UK and around the world and bring fresh thinking to ways in which documentary films can reach audiences on new platforms.”
The organisation currently holds partnerships with a range of organisations including the Bertha Foundation, The Sundance Institute and The Ford Foundation.
EDA
