(Park City) Filmmaker Yance Ford was still in the “Sundance mood” when he met with Netflix executives after the premiere of his documentary Strong Island in 2017.
At the time, the online streaming platform was still a bit new in the “original documentary” niche. But Netflix had made several good moves with documentaries as different as The Squareon the Egyptian revolution and Tahrir Square, or What Happened, Miss Simone?portrait of Nina Simone by Liz Garbus, both Oscar finalists.
Strong Island will also obtain an Oscar nomination, just like another Netflix documentary presented at Sundance, Icaruson Russian doping, which will win the best documentary prize in 2018 at Hollywood and Sundance.
Ten years after The Squarean acquisition that made Netflix documentaries known, the online broadcaster is back at 40e Sundance Film Festival, with an eye on acquisitions and two very different original films.
Yance Ford’s most recent documentary, Poweran investigation into the evolution of policing in the United States, had its world premiere Thursday evening in Park City, Utah. The Greatest Night in Popby Bao Nguyen, on the creation of the charity anthem We Are the Worldwas to be presented on Friday before being broadcast on January 29 on the platform.
“Netflix is largely responsible for the documentary landscape that exists today,” says Yance Ford. Thanks to [cette plateforme en continu], the public has access to films like mine. »
With Power, which examines policing from the air – 30,000 feet – Ford admits he wasn’t too interested in the debate over defunding the police. “I wasn’t particularly interested in rhetoric [du mouvement] Back the Blue. What interested me was this thing that I saw at play, which was just this manifestation of state power exerted over people. »
A large distribution range
Adam Del Deo, vice president of documentary at Netflix, joined the company around the time of The Square and it was he who ordered What Happened, Miss Simone?.
“We were really the new kids trying to persuade documentarians of the importance of such a platform for broadcast reach. »
In the ten years since, Netflix’s audience has grown from around 37 million subscribers to more than 250 million worldwide – and the appetite for documentaries has only intensified. This success allowed Netflix to experiment with orders and acquisitions in fiction series and feature films, notably Chef’s Table, Making a Murderer, Wild Wild CountryEmmy winner, American FactoryOscar winner, and Crip CampOscar finalist.
The Greatest Night in Poppresented Friday at Sundance, was produced by Lionel Richie and offers never-before-seen images from the making of We Are the Worldthis memorable charity song that began with Harry Belafonte and brought together artists as diverse as Bruce Springsteen, Smokey Robinson, Cyndi Lauper, Dionne Warwick and Huey Lewis.
Although director Nguyen was only about two years old when the song was released in 1985, it has taken on more meaning as the years have gone by. It was one of the records his parents, Vietnamese refugees, often played. And then recently, while visiting his mother in Vietnam, his taxi driver played it and its timeless, global resonance took hold.
“It was such an unlikely group of artists that came together overnight,” Nguyen said. It’s great to be able to share this film with the world, because the song has touched people all over the world. »