Three years after the shutdown of ERT, I realise that when ERT was shut down I was so much a part of that system that it was impossible for me to conceive writing what follows.

The shutdown and reopening of Public Television in Greece
· Tuesday 11/6/2013: An announcement by the government spokesman is broadcast on ERT at 18.00 that ERT will stop broadcasting at midnight that same day.
· 11/6/2013, 24.00: A black screen begins to be broadcast by all public channels.
· ERT employees continue (illegally – ERT is officially closed) to produce programme and broadcast online by host sites such as the one of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) until 19/8/2013.
· Late August 2013: A makeshift agency at the Ministry of Finance called “DT” (the acronym of Public Television in Greek) begins broadcasting on the frequencies of the former ERT channels. Some employees are hired (mainly from former ERT ones).
· 7/11/2013: Following a public prosecutor's order, riot police forces (MAT) raided the ERT building in Athens at night and evicted the remaining ERT employees who had stayed on for almost five months working for free.
· In the following days, ERT's main evening news bulletin, as well as some news programmes, were broadcast from the street outside of the ERT building. A few days later, ERT employees were moved to the ERT3 studio.
· All employees were dismissed and received dismissal payment.
· 30/1/2014: Inauguration of ERT Open facilities at POSPERT offices (the ERT Employee Union, except for journalists), across the street from the ERT building. Some of the former ERT employees continue to produce programme through ERT Open (without a salary).
4/5/2014–11/6/2015: The New Hellenic Broadcasting Corporation (NERIT), the new public broadcaster of Greece, launches (incorporation and statutes were approved as of 26/7/2013). Its headquarters were at the former ERT building at Agia Paraskevi. There were three TV channels – NERIT 1, NERIT Plus and NERIT HD – and five radio stations. Its revenue came from a reimbursement fee and from advertising.
· 11/6/2015: all aspects of NERIT’s activity (radio, TV, internet) cease and are replaced by their ERT equivalents; ERT reopens after 2 years, again under the name ERT, and all its former employees who wished to return to their posts (within 5 days) were hired back.

Questions:
Was there a report on how much it cost to shut down ERT and reopen it? (An investigation was announced by the government on 4/10/2017 regarding the cost of ERT’s 11 June 2013 shutdown.)
Why was ERT shut down and reopened just as it had been before?
Why and where did the evaluation and what the government had in mind to achieve by closing ERT fail?
What was right in all this process?
What have we/they learned from this process that was then applied to the "new" ERT after the shutdown to make it better?
What does the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) have to say about it all?
How does Greek Public Television operate today? There is talk of a bias, censorship, and news manipulation at ERT now as in the past. How is ERT's independence guaranteed?
How does ERT cover journalistic-interest events?
What was the position of ESIEA and other journalists’ unions about it?

ERT – My Personal Experience
I became an ERT contractor in autumn 2001 to work on the morning show and do broader research. I was not aware that you could be hired by ERT without being a permanent employee; I did not know anything about “contractors.” I was, of course, recommended by someone who knew my work (a journalist working on the news). As a journalist I worked at the morning news programme covering breaking news and live broadcasts (2002–2008), the daily culture show Simeio ART (2010–2013), and the radio, where I produced and presented a talk show on documentary (the first of its kind on Greek radio). I worked at ERT until 2013. In the meantime, I was appointed as Head of documentary acquisitions at ERT Digital (2008–2010) and became the ERT representative at ARTE in Strasbourg (where I attended the monthly programming meeting under ERT’s agreement for international co-productions with ARTE). When ERT was shut down, I was made redundant, and when it reopened I returned within the time frame stipulated (five days). I stayed for about one month, working in the protected environment of the Radio, exploring my options and thinking that something was bound to have changed. I resigned when I realised that, not only had nothing changed, but things were much worse than before, because the two years of shutdown had to be made good from one day to the next. TV staff was in a panic: Not only did they have to manage to produce the programme but they also had to prove that they were not lazy public officers hired back. I feel profound relief for resigning and have not regretted it once in the past three years. In retrospect with the necessary distance today, the situation when ERT reopened was identical with before, and unfortunately it continues to be so, in my opinion, to this day.

· Party-appointed persons, usually having no relevant experience or qualifications, in executive positions
· Censorship
· No interest in meritocracy and evaluation – excellence
· Focus only on news and bulletins that serve the government
· Introversion and obscurantism (e.g. the agreement for international co-productions with ARTE was, and still remains, neglected)
· Efforts for factory-type total control of staff (especially journalists), while certain people returned to ERT salaries yet failed to show up to work every day
· Poor-quality journalism
· Under-representation of arts & culture
· Even fewer islands of freedom and creativity
· Even more powerful POSPERT (administrative and technical unionists, other than journalists)
· An endless misery pervading the very building itself, reflecting the prevailing financial situation in Greece
· Scant personnel since those who returned sought to retire as soon as possible
· Low viewing (much lower than before shutdown)

ERT before the Shutdown
There was always a rumour that ET2 (one of ERT’s three channels, the arts & culture channel) would be shut down. It is not clear why exactly, but it was there. Perhaps it was due to the fact that it had poor ratings (less than 2%) and was the "cultural channel” – therefore served the interests of no administration. Personally I was shocked when the shutdown came, although I worked there and I, and everyone else, should have known better and been prepared). I found out a few hours later by fellow journalists, political editors at VIMA newspaper who I run into on the street after work, around 4 p.m. on 11 June 2013. They already knew; they had information to that effect, which was finally being confirmed. In the evening I went to ERT, like most others, where I stayed overnight so that the "bad guys" who were closing us down could not come and close us down for real. As long as the microphones were on, we had power. We were the public television – without any government intervention for the first time ever.

ERT after the Shutdown
On 11 June 2013, the Greek government, through a joint ministerial decree, announced that on midnight of the same day, the ERT broadcast signal would be cut off, which was effected using riot police at broadcasting antenna facilities. Ironically, the announcement was made on the 18.00 ERT news bulletin. The bubbles of our "open-ended" contracts, which "ensured" that we could never lose our jobs, burst. According to the statement made by the then government spokesman, after a brief (but unspecified) time period a new public broadcaster would be established, which would be up to date, completely independent, disengaged from the corruption and wastefulness of the past, whose staff would strictly be selected on merit and at much lower numbers than the "old" ERT, to number less than 1,000 persons. ERT was the first state-owned company to be shut down under the government's agreement with the Troika for shutting down state agencies and organizations, as well as for civil servant layoffs. Thus, 3 television channels of national coverage (one in Thessaloniki) plus 1 for the Greek diaspora, 7 radio stations, 19 regional stations, the archive/museum, 3 orchestras, and a television magazine (the latter had ceased publication a month earlier) went out of operation. Automatically this meant that some 2,656 ERT employees would be laid off and compensated. In spite of the theoretical (1) budget surplus ensured by the fee embedded in every electricity bill, paid by all, whether they had a TV set or not), the government spokesman described ERT as a "shelter of waste” that cost more and had less viewers than private media. (2)

Employees take an Active Role
ERT employees held a general assembly to determine their stance and issued this statement:
"ERT must be open: to society and its contradictions, issues, concerns, ideas, and actions. ERT must be open: to culture, the world, the various trends, pursuits, and dynamics. ERT must be open: to every citizen of the world in Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, Australia. Public Broadcasting has the power and the will to upkeep the public good of information, culture, and sport. It has the courage and determination to fight to stop ERT from being manipulated by any single-party or multi-party administration. We, its staff, are still alive and will prove equal to the circumstances. We will strive for an institutional framework for the operation of ERT, which will consolidate and safeguard the independence of public broadcasting, will finally cut off the umbilical cord with the government and every centre, visible or not, of political and clientelist interventions. ERT must be open – the property and true asset of all Greek citizens. Those who draft plans to shut down ERT can only serve other types of interests. They are dangerous. We, the journalists of the Hellenic Public Broadcasting Corporation, firmly state that we will keep ERT open by all means. We call on every citizen, from Gavdos to Evros, to prevent this nightmare. To prevent any attempt to mute the national Public Broadcaster. Let those who dream up nightmares remain in a fairy tale, or wake up before it's too late. We are awake. We are in a permanent General Assembly and we invite citizens, social and political actors, academics, literary and cultural figures to ERT building at Agia Paraskevi at 19.00. We won’t budge. ERT IS AND WILL REMAIN OPEN.

What Changed in the Employees' Attitude with the Shutdown
I single out from statements of the time:

“It […] will finally cut off the umbilical cord with the government and every centre, visible or not, of political and clientelist interventions.”

And,

“It has the courage and determination to fight to stop ERT from being manipulated by any single-party or multi-party administration,” which say a lot about how what went on in ERT.

Something else that happened was that, in the panic of the shutdown, ERT’s potential awoke from its slumber of long years. "We are still alive" and other such melodramatic statements were made, which resonated with other parts of the population, which feared for its future (especially holders of indefinite contracts with other agencies of the sprawling Greek state administration). Yet, there were other voices saying, "They did well to shut it down, we paid for them, we paid for nothing, ERT's partying is over." Everyone was right, if we had to say who was.
The General Assembly of ERT Journalists: "The ERT employee assembly decided on Tuesday night that all employees would remain both in the Agia Paraskevi building and in the buildings of the regional stations; they called on Athenians for support, and announced open-air protest concerts in ERT’s headquarters. Partying and protesting at the same time, and as the medium broadcast the message, it reached all those who had their own reasons to protest. Using satellite services, some offices and other facilities not yet shut down, journalists continued to broadcast online via EBU (until 19/8/2013). However, it was a time of diversity and some wonderful things came out, produced democratically. This was the first time I have ever had an experience like this. And it lasted for a month for me. Almost a month, which I spent at ERT, producing and presenting shows about the issues I knew best – culture and documentary. Everyone had an incentive to demonstrate that ERT should remain open, and they along with it. It was a matter of principle, a reaction of pride. Yet, why did it have to get to that point before we reacted? Why didn’t anyone speak out earlier? Was this material evaluated?
From the very first moment of the announcement, there were strong reactions from the entire political world, which seized the opportunity to make statements. Already on Tuesday 11/6/2013, at 19.45, SYRIZA President Alexis Tsipras (who eventually reopened ERT as it was before, when he became prime minister, in 2015) visited ERT and stated: “In the old days there were royal decrees – today there are legislative acts. This is the 19th in a row. This is a coup, directed not only against workers but also against the Greek people as a whole. They lie to the Greek people, saying that they seek to eliminate wastefulness; they lie because ERT gives to the budget, it does not receives from it. I warn the government not to try to cut out the signal. If it does, it will be accountable to justice. Public service broadcasting is a matter of democracy. It is the Troika that must be shut down." (3)

Streamlining, How?
Ιn the years when I was working at ERT (2001–2013), often there was watercooler talk to the effect that the only way to rid ERT of idlers, trade unionists, party-appointed worthless employees (which were only too many) and salaried people who never showed up for work (some 80–100 persons, two of whom I personally knew) was to shut it down after having evaluated everyone and reopen it the next day after doing what needed to be done. In other words, to get rid of the "useless” ones, make the best of the untapped potential, and, with a new organisational structure drafted in advance without compromise, to build a new, streamlined public television. It was also a common secret that ERT was basically "run" by contractors, not permanent employees. There were contractors in all specialties – technicians (the so-called “outsourced crews"), administrators, and journalists. Even trainers (there was a gym, of course, at ERT) and gardeners.

Permanent and Semi-permanent Staff
The “permanent” staff was a nightmare to work with for the 12 years I had to work with them. Simply because most of them worked as if they were making a personal favour to you. “Don’t worry, be happy" was the technicians’ motto whenever they were asked to actually do their work. The unprecedented loafing of some people who were just wandering around aimlessly at work was hard to put to words, and of course if you were willing to go the extra mile at work you were accused of “unfair competition." To be able merely to get your job done required careful social engineering; to manage to work with colleagues of this kind you had to have a world of patience with technicians, or if it were your lucky day you might get someone who shared your willingness to work during your shift. How much energy wasted! On my very first shooting, the sound engineer told me, "I wanted to get a job at Olympic Airways, but my guy only had connections at ERT, so here I am." This mechanism was so firmly established that it could crush you if you did not play along. As long as I could, I always sought islands of safety.
My own contract was as a journalist, also as a contractor initially and then an "indefinite" contract based on a 2005 Law that converted all outsourcing project contracts at the time to indefinite status for those who had three successive such contracts within a certain period of time. This Law made permanent ERT’s last 1200 contractors. More than half of those did not even have a university degree. Yet, the Journalists’ Union (ESIEA) didn’t say anything about those 600 journalists without a degree who were hired under an indefinite-time contract. As a journalist I had the right to work on the side, with a side work permit, or to claim an "exclusive" contract with ERT (in addition to the indefinite-time contract), through which I could have another salary, a much higher one (of course). I got such a contract (a 6-month agreement for 2,500 Euros before tax, instead of 1,800 Euros) when I was appointed as Head of documentary acquisition at ERT Digital (a post which did not even exist in the organisational chart).

What Was Happening at ERT?
The issue of “permanent status" was inhibiting all areas of work and productivity. The ERT salary served as a basis for working on the side, and therefore work for ERT had to be done expending the minimum amount of energy. Journalists’ self-promotion and privileges were a motivation for work (and claiming more privileges – exclusive contracts, for instance) but to the extent that the management allowed you to do your work. There was the "fridge". If you were not liked by the management, or did not suit it politically, they did not drive you away (because it couldn’t), but it set you aside for some time – on the shortwave radio for example. I spent time "in the fridge," when the administration decided to shut down ERT Digital television overnight.

The Golden-Boys Era
In mid-2000, the most successful show, for example, was Lyritzis and Economou, where I worked for 7 years covering breaking news and live interviews. Lyritzis and Economou, who had radio experience, where they had a very successful political show, did not have an indefinite-time contract, but a contract in the order of 350,000 Εuros per year each, for ERT’s daily morning news zone (6.00-10.00).
Of course, journalists, as I said, enjoyed a better status and more freedom (or at least an illusion of freedom) than the administration. Good shows were untouchable, the news bulletin was the flagship of the news department, sports always came above shows and news (very often the TV and radio programme was shifted around for their sake). The only opportunities to do other things, perhaps more creative and worthwhile, from 2001 on, when I was at ERT, were for example culture and radio.

ERT Digital – A New ERT (which did not last long) within the Old One
From time to time, certain exasperated efforts to get over the status quo of ERT’s operation were made. One of these was ERT Digital, where I worked in 2008–2010. ERT Digital operated like a separate ERT, without an organisational chart of its own, yet with a distinct status and budget, with the tolerance of “mother" ERT, as we fondly called it, because it was under the protection and management of one of the three ERT chairman’s advisors, and enjoyed flexibility and freedom. ERT Digital was the first attempt to re-invent ERT while it was in operation. In other words, a concurrent ERT, which seemed to be intended to replace mother ERT eventually. Employees were contracted from the private sector; there was a news channel, a channel for people with disabilities, an art & culture channel, and a sport channel. The most privileged ERT employees and some who were qualified, such as myself (not that I was privileged – I was simply being lucky), were transferred from mother ERT to staff ERT Digital. This was in 2007–2010.
It was an experiment: for instance, a 24-hour arts and culture programme was built, having ARTE as a model – Cine + – on a budget of 1 million Euros. Perhaps that is precisely why it was shut down. Perhaps so that it was not competitive to pay-TV channels. Or so as not to compete with mother ERT, which always saw ERT Digital with suspicion (and rightly so, as the latter was more "independent" and did not operate under the mother ERT's hierarchy, obviously). A few years later, three to be exact, ERT would be shut down completely for two years under a right-wing government and another prime minister.

Greeks and ERT
The government shut down ERT without imagining the impact. The people, however, always turned to ERT for reliable information on all big events, when the channel showed its best self. I remember the tsunami in India, 9/11, elections, extreme weather – the people always switched on ERT for information on such events. So, the shutdown, which became known as “the black screen” did not go down well with the people. And people “rebelled," demonstrating outside ERT and blocking the road for days on end. I do not know if this reflected the majority, but they were determined and certainly had nothing to lose. Yet, this was the same ERT that we all claimed back – the one that in 2012 censored a kiss between a gentleman and a male servant in the first episode of Downton Abbey – and after the uproar decided to broadcast, a few days later, the episode, with the scene in question, after midnight.
I believe that the pressure of the people, the Greek sentimentality, and the, albeit brief, explosive reaction, helped to put on pressure for a solution. (Yet, was there finally a solution?) Even the timing helped, being in June and hence summertime, and good weather facilitated concerts, demonstrations, endless debates and protests in front of ERT’s main building, in which hundreds of thousands of people participated passionately. From day one, you would be forgiven to believe that it was a fair, with dozens of illicit (naturally) street vendors roasting souvlaki and corn, the smoke covering up the dozens of banners and slogans from various trade unions from all over the country that hung across the front on the fence. They had ruffled the Greeks’ feathers by closing “the people’s ERT". The same ERT, which others blamed for “a program that sucked, government-manipulated news," saying that "we're paying for loafers, lazy buggers who enjoy a permanent job while people all around are being fired and face the crisis." Do not forget this was 2013. Emotionally reacting, Greeks responded to the cuts they suffered, to the pressure they were under, due to the insecurity caused by the financial crisis and a future that looked bleak. ERT (its employees) had a moment of awakening and began to give and to demand, to open up to its audience, to whom it had turned its back until then. The symphony orchestras went out to the courtyard and gave free concerts for the people every day. The archives were put to good use, for once, as a way to fill in the gap in the programme. There was contact, a common ground, dialogue, great programming – everyone gave their best, and a large part of the people responded. Public television was a public good: Everyone could claim it, and finally did.
This was also a time of public consultations using democratic procedures, and debates on democracy, on “what kind of public television do we want,” moderated by journalists. We all volunteered to offer what we knew how to do best, and the broadcasts, structured in zones to which everyone had the opportunity to contribute, were on 24 hours a day. Films were provided free of charge, royalty-free – everyone gave what they could. I think this was a phenomenon that called for a psychological analysis. I stayed on for about a month. Then I began to think about what I was going to do with my career. Others went on at ERT Open, going without a salary for two years, until ERT reopened and they all returned to their posts or were promoted to a "coordinator" position.
But back then nothing had happened – under the pressure of this unexpected people’s reaction for ERT, the government had to do something. Constitution of the Hellenic Republic, Article 15: (Cinema, Recording, Radio, Television)
1. The press protection provisions of the previous article do not apply to cinema, recording, radio, television, and any other similar means of transmitting audio or video. 2. Radio and television are under the direct control of the State. Control and enforcement of administrative sanctions fall within the exclusive competence of the National Council of Radio and Television, which is an independent authority as defined by law. Direct control by the State, which also takes the form of the status of the previous license, aims at the objective and equitable broadcast of information and news, as well as of the products of literature and art, ensuring the quality of the programmes imposed by the the social mission of radio and television, and the cultural development of the country, as well as the respect for human value and the protection of childhood and youth. The compulsory and free broadcast of parliamentary proceedings, as well as of election messages by the political parties by broadcasting media is provided by law.
The two State Council decisions following ERT’s shutdown said, in free translation: "You were wrong to shut it down – there must be a public television." A Ministry of Finance agency was promptly set up, named Public Television (DT), and began broadcasting makeshift programme in late August 2013. Certain employees were in fact hired (by a process that is not clear to me). I was asked by phone to "go and give a hand," which I did not do. I remember the phone call was promising a lot; it was on a weekend on my cellphone, while I was at Galaxidi (in Delphi Municipality) just before or after the 15 August holiday. At the same time, the tribute I was working on as a journalist and presenter at ARTE – a 24-hour tribute to Greece without bias and beyond the headlines – aired.

Public Television
Public Television (DT) (initially called Hellenic Public Television, or EDT) was the transitional public broadcaster, which broadcast a television programme between ERT’s shutdown and the launch of NERIT. The legal entity running DT was the Special Asset and Liabilities Manager of the former ERT S.A.," under the Ministry of Finance. DT broadcast on the frequencies of the former ERT channels. From the late January 2014, DT’s management had passed to the Board of Directors of NERIT until the new broadcaster went into operation, while DT staff was rented out to NERIT.

NERIT
The law provided for a Board of Directors and a Supervisory Board, and, in early May, NERIT began to broadcast a program that was largely makeshift and full of repetitions. The intention was to hire another 650 people by October. The ratings were sad. It was already one and a half years since ERT’s shutdown, and now there were two television stations (essentially only one in operation) and three radio stations – the First Programme, the Third Programme (external production), and Kosmos FM, airing a play list, which was also intended to be outsourced. NERIT also had a symphony orchestra and the museum/archive. There were some 900 employees (850 were hired by DT to continue until their contracts expired at the end of 2015 and 40 by NERIT).

What was happening in the administration? NERIT executives, including the CEO of the Board of Directors and his deputy, resigned, denouncing direct government intervention in their work. (4) Members of the Supervisory Board followed suit, complaining of government manipulation. (5) At the same time, the Single-Member First-Instance Court of Athens annulled the redundancies of former ERT employees, and reports of illegalities and fake certificates in the NERIT recruitment procedure were published. In 2014, a total of €190 million was collected from the contributory fee in electricity bills, of which 91% was allocated to NERIT (the remaining went towards Greece's debt). The total revenue was €194.2, but due to the compulsory retention of revenue, NERIT recorded a loss of €3.8 million.
The NERIT project was left incomplete, and ERT reopened “just as it had been," again hiring all former employees. Chatting with former colleagues three years later, in 2018, they all unanimously said, “You’re so lucky you left," and, “Things have never been worse."

Dimitra Kouzi (29/1/2018)

(1) Why should ERT's budget (which covered wages and content) equal the contributory fee? And be determined by it?
(2) A partially correct observation for points 2 and 3.
(3) Does ERT actually give back to the budget? It receives the compulsory contributory fee included in all electricity bills and gives it to the budget. So it is not ERT that gives – it’s the Greeks who give (again).
(4) What was previously permitted could not continue now. The question arises, “Since they did not want to intervene, and that was one of the reasons why they shut down ERT, why did they continue to intervene in the new ERT?"
(5) Pantelis Kapsis, who was in charge of the transition from the shutdown ERT to the new broadcaster, stated in his capacity as press secretary responsible for public television:
"I was tasked with building the new broadcaster, but there was a decision by the Council of State to the effect that a programme had to be restored immediately. Since the two new entities – the Supervisory Board and the Board of Directors – were established, I did not have any competence over them, only political oversight,” noted Kapsis, who went on to say, "In the struggle to set up NERIT, my role was auxiliary. And it was a big struggle, an unprecedented effort, to establish a public utility from the beginning. Now I realise that you cannot make a public utility under such stifling political, social, and time pressures. It’s practically impossible. I don’t feel I could have done something different. Perhaps in terms of the persons involved, it can be said that we did not achieve the best chemistry for this endeavour. Yet, I feel that when two centres of authority are put into place, this creates the conditions for friction." A recent amendment to the NERIT Act passed by the Second Summer Parliament House, provides that one of these two "power centres", the Supervisory Board, will be designated by the respective government. There were many reactions. "The NERIT Act in fact required time-consuming procedures, but the solution is not restoring government control. The Supervisory Board can and should be appointed by a more representative body, not by the House majority,” remarked Pantelis Kapsis. (Kathimerini newspaper, Giouli Eptakoili, "NERIT: Neither Public Nor Television,” Tileorasi, 28.09.2014)

The literary author Christos Chomenidis (who then resigned from NERIT’s Supervisory Board, in which he participated gratuitously) remarked: "The only way to avoid being criticised is to do nothing. I accepted the post because I considered it as an opportunity. I have an outlook on things that unfortunately is being refuted by reality. If this government cohabitation was sincerely aimed at reforming, it would have changed the rules of the game in Greece. It would also sooner or later force the opposition to enter into a game of substance. Yet, no one seems to be willing to make any reforms. We live in a pretext, rather than reality. And an apt case in point is public radio and television broadcasting." To the Chairman, Supervisory Board, NERIT, Professor Theodoros Fortsakis, Athens, 15 September 2014
Christos Chomenidis’s resignation followed the resignations of the CEO, Antonis Makrydimitris, and the deputy CEO, Rodolfos Moronis, last week.

Read also more facts and figures in Kathimerini newspaper 28.5.2018
http://www.kathimerini.gr/966050/gallery/politismos/thleorash/se-tentwmeno-skoini-h-ert

Articles, EN

Our local newspaper in the era of fake news

September 12, 2018 Dimitra Kouzi Leave a comment

Immediately after the liberation of Greece in 1945-46, my grandfather Mitsos (Mastorikos) gathered a group of friends at his pharmacy on Bouboulinas Street in Piraeus and together they re-founded the Association of Galaxidians (Galaxidi, Delphi Municipality). This group comprised Takis Angelis, the Admiral, Dionysis Katsanakis, the Hellenic Navy pharmacist, and Jannis Skaftouros, who had the coffee shop in the narrow street immediately behind and parallel to Akti Miaouli, the main quayside thoroughfare of Piraeus. Mastorikos was also fortunate to have on board Costas Avgeris, a prominent journalist, along with two or three others (does anyone remember them?), and there, at 9 Bouboulinas Street, they decided to recommence publication of To Galaxidi newspaper as an integral part of the association. They would get together almost every afternoon at the pharmacy, which was a popular meeting place for Galaxidians. In time, others joined the cause: Giorgos Kontorigas, Giorgos Mitropoulos, Giannis Mitropoulos, Giannis Gerosideris, Manos Hatzis, Andreas Perdikis, Giorgos Makris and several others who someone may remember.
At the Delphi Economic Forum held in spring earlier this year ("To Galaxidi", issue no. 740, March 2018), one of the subjects discussed was almost fake news as the symptom of a press facing problems. In this time of information overload, one can easily make the mistake of underestimating the value of a local newspaper. The truth is, however, that the role of local newspapers is now more important than ever. On the one hand, they create space for the publication of local news of which there is a lack, while on the other, these local news items – precisely because they are about a small place where everyone knows everyone and with which everyone is familiar – are less likely to be fake, or almost fake. Sadly, though, our local newspaper has already fallen victim to the phenomenon.
It was suggested at the forum that news, like food, should carry a label, so that we know what it contains and where it comes from. A survey by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford and similar research by Stanford University in California show that when asked if they knew the source of the news they were reading, e.g. Facebook, the majority of respondents answered in the negative.
There is currently much discussion about self-regulation and the role of the state in matters pertaining to the threats and challenges facing the "traditional media", which are in danger of disappearing, given that 80% of online advertising in Europe goes to Google and Facebook. And at Delphi we heard from Margaritis Schinas, Chief Spokesperson for the European Commission, that Europe feels alone in its battle against fake news. "We have no help or encouragement from civil society, no support from the media, not even from the Erasmus generation," he said.
The Commission spokesperson went on to say that the various platforms were partly responsible, since they cannot be compared to the postman who did not know the content of the letter he was delivering. Schinas noted that 75% of inappropriate content is already being removed. But the question is: what happens with the remaining 25%? And at a time when Facebook receives 500,000 posts per minute, is effective editorial control over content even possible?
Another topic for discussion at this year's Delphi Economic Forum was the future of journalism, with the participation of guest speakers from all over the world. According to one speaker, an interesting phenomenon has been observed in Greece since the beginning of the ongoing economic crisis. Because of the inability of the middle class to express itself (and be heard) through the traditional media, a new type of information propagation appeared, namely through social media. In 2017, Greeks lay second from bottom worldwide in the confidence they have in the standard mass media (akin to their lack of confidence in public transport, higher education institutions, the national health system and the pension system). So it would be of particular interest if one were to carry out a study focusing on social media posts in Greece since 2009/2010. What first happened in Greece, we are now seeing in the UK with Brexit, in the USA with Donald Trump, and so on, according to Alexis Papahelas, Executive Editor of Kathimerini newspaper. Societies that close their doors and isolate themselves, yet at the same time interconnect, provide fertile ground for misinformation to flourish. And we understand what this means when authoritarian regimes are 'flourishing' in so many countries. To ensure that news continues to be produced, we must learn to pay for it, according to Achilles Tsaltas, Vice-President of International Conferences at The New York Times. For the digital version of his newspaper, readers pay one euro per day, just as they pay 3 euros for a coffee. Because real journalism, which should be the backbone of any democracy, has a cost.
Meanwhile, media literacy – with respect to both analogue and digital technologies – is more necessary than ever, and it can begin with local newspapers. Perhaps a visit to the Delphi Forum (held annually in early March) would be of interest to some local teachers; and it could provide a good source of topics for the composition class. It could also 'feed' our local newspaper, which is an ideal platform for transparency, a space for accurate news that is worth learning so that we can discuss it and come up with solutions. After all, this was the vision of its founders, my grandfather and yours.
Dimitra Kouzi
Recommended reading: Free Speech by Timothy Garton Ash
Photo caption: Mitsa Palaiologou in a dance move, next to Mastorikos (wearing glasses). (From the photographic archive of Maria Mastorikou-Kouzi)
Article first published in TO GALAXIDI newspaper, July 2018 issue.

Audience Development, Doc-making, EN, Interviews, People

Talking about audiences with: Axel Arnö

January 9, 2018 Dimitra Kouzi Leave a comment

Dimitra Kouzi: The idea is to open the discussion about audience development, impact producing, and outreach using journalistic skills to create audiences, to reach audiences, to talk to audiences. What do broadcasters do in that direction?

I thought that talking with somebody with your great experience as a commissioning editor and as a journalist, working at the same time in a channel like SVT would be fantastic in order to share some insights on how broadcasters have the power and mechanism to support documentaries to reach a bigger audience. Or do they?

Axel Arnö: So that's quite a new thing; there is a new profession going: impact producers. And I was at Good Pitch in Copenhagen, where it's all about how to create impact.

Dimitra Kouzi: What would your spontaneous reaction be, if I asked you how you understand the phrase ‘audience development’? What is the audience for you? Who is the audience?

Axel Arnö: I think all filmmakers must have some idea of whom they are speaking to. Sometimes filmmakers are so immersed in their own story that they are not really talking to the receiver. Their focus is to be true to their artistic beliefs. I totally respect that, but we must also be aware of the fact that there is somebody at the other end. It's very important to visualise that someone is receiving, which is something I very often say to filmmakers. You need to understand that even if you think that this film communicates really well, if an audience sits there in the dark and doesn't understand what's happening in the film, if you lose that audience because you are making decisions so as to make the film more visually appealing to you, then I think you are on the wrong path. I think you always have to think about who is going to receive your film, and what you want to say with that.

We often have discussions about impact as well, of course – how to present the film in the best way. Impact for us publishers is probably the best we can do to release it at the right time to give the film as much attention as possible. In terms of long-term impact, we can help with exposure, but we don't do impact campaigns. I think our role as commissioning editors is to work together with the filmmaker to make the film as powerful as possible, as understandable as possible, as true to fact as possible in order for it to become a tool for change – which is what many filmmakers want. We are in this business to change the world, so we want to have change, we want to make a difference. I'm really sad when a film I've been working on has low ratings, or nothing happens – nothing in the papers, no reviews – it just feels like a waste of time. We now think even more, together with the filmmakers, how to prolong a film’s life.

Dimitra Kouzi: How do you do that as a channel?

Axel Arnö: Here in the documentary department, we call ourselves ‘web-first’. Ratings are not as important. We need to be out there on the platform where the audiences are. The problem for us is that we have an audience that is quite big in broadcast, but on the web, it's significant smaller. Because we have multinational competitors. SVT has a market share of around 35% in broadcast, and we have been very stable; we are still the biggest broadcaster. And on the internet, we have around 12% market share, and we are number 4 after YouTube, Facebook, and Netflix. With Facebook, it's because they have this autoplay, when you scroll through the Facebook stream, they count the streams even if they are quiet, which is not really fair.

Dimitra Kouzi: Are you competing with YouTube, Facebook, and Netflix?

Axel Arnö: YouTube has a completely different audience. But it's an audience that we want, too. It's really difficult to compete with YouTube. And Netflix, of course, they have a lot of money now. So, we will probably struggle to keep at the top. As a public service broadcaster, we need to be everywhere – your mother, my mother, us, our kids, which is a challenge. Those are very different audiences, and one particular film might have more of one kind of audience than another.

Dimitra Kouzi: In current affairs, you probably have more men and older men, don’t you?

Axel Arnö: That is probably true. All traditional current affairs will be viewed by an older audience. They are used to talking heads and a voice of God that tells you how it is. Which is not the way young audiences understand the world. But I have to defend solid journalism with real facts. So, I think it is a good thing that we do what we do. And I strongly protest against anyone who says that objective journalism is dead. We strive to be correct, fair and impartial. It is really our mission to be true – otherwise we will be dead very soon.

A creative documentary can of course be more subjective. Then, you have to be transparent about how subjective you are and what you are doing. You cannot lie.

Dimitra Kouzi: I agree that objective journalism is certainly not dead, and strong and good journalism continues to be a public broadcaster’s strong card. You often see this tendency to train people who are reporters, cameramen, sound recordists on the spot, like kamikazes who cover the news where it is happening, in order to cut expenses. This is an interesting situation happening everywhere: to use citizens to replace journalists or reporters. How do you as a public broadcaster use these other media which are available? I mean the radio and all the others in order to report, share, and promote the content you create?

Axel Arnö: We are special cases. In Sweden, public TV broadcasting and radio broadcasting separated in the 1970s. I think the reason was that they didn't want television to ‘eat’ everything, because we have so many expenses and we are so much bigger than the radio. But there is now a fear to break this freedom about our presence online. National-newspaper editors think they should go back to broadcast television. But then we are answering that this is just stupid and wish that we were all online. Nobody will tell newspapers to go back and be printed on paper only. So, we all are going to be in the same arena. But I think, thank God we have public television, because we still have money to do real investigative journalism, and soon enough we will be the only ones to have the power to do that.

Dimitra Kouzi: How much is the budget you have?

Axel Arnö: I have a pretty flexible budget so that I can buy, pre-buy, and co-produce films. And sometimes I make a full commission, depending on the subject. Often, I find new projects through the EBU Documentary group, or through my own network. I also try to push my colleagues when I see that we should do more about a specific issue, like you probably heard about Why Slavery? That came from a couple of broadcasters, and it's now going to be six programs about modern slavery. So far, more than 30 partners have committed to broadcasting during the same week.

Dimitra Kouzi: When is the premiere?

Axel Arnö: Right now, the launch is expected in October 2018. I think in terms of impact this is really something we as public-service broadcasters can deliver. By pooling our resources and broadcasting simultaneously, we hope to create a big world-wide discussion about modern slavery.

I can use my network to initiate new projects or to talk about what we should do as public-service broadcasters. We can make a huge difference!

For example, we did a film called India's Daughter, and that film was phenomenal, because it was broadcast in one week, I think in 20 countries, and it exploded all over the world – mainly because India decided to ban it, and that made headlines everywhere. It was a very good film, and luckily we could make a coordinated effort so everybody aired at the same time, and it was a huge success.

We also collaborate to find the best new films, whether already in the market or upcoming. And, of course I go to all these financing forums, I go everywhere. But that's because I want to find the best material.

Dimitra Kouzi: You also act as a producer. What is the target you want to reach? You said that you have to be everywhere – that's a big task.

Axel Arnö: Yes, it is. But the headline of your talk will be ‘creating audiences,’ or do you mean ‘finding audiences’? I think you have to be true to your own personal beliefs. I'm not going out there chasing young audiences; I think young people will come when we do a big thing. I see in festivals, as well, there is a much younger audience, and they like these investigative films. In a documentary film, an investigation can be presented in so many ways. You can do a personal film like in Gasland, or an investigative piece like Inside Job. Icarus is also a very investigative film, but very personal. It can be both: investigative and personal.

Dimitra Kouzi: There’s a gap. On the one hand, television is trying to reach young audiences. On the other, these people do not watch TV. They also don’t go to the cinema. Some of them go fanatically to festivals, and then after the festivals the films are ‘lost’ again.

Axel Arnö: In terms of views, I think it's much more. All the films here that go on cinema have very low ticket sales. But again: exposure. Sometimes we agree to a holdback, because it's better for the momentum, so you can go touring with the film, you can get headlines in all the local newspapers. But sometimes I don't want to wait for a theatrical window, or an Oscar run. If you really want to have impact, I think it might be good with a short festival run; then, it should go to television, because people will want to see the film.

Dimitra Kouzi: There’s a recipe: do a film festival run and then go to television.

Axel Arnö: I want the message to lead the audience, and we still have the mass audience. My first slot, which is 52 minutes, I'm trying to experiment a little both in terms of subjects and in terms of storytelling. It's gaining recognition and viewership, and this is after 35 years. But it's not only the old people – there is a generation that is finding out these things. I think we can do a lot more when it comes to finding the audience. We have to work a lot in the future to have contact with the audience.

Dimitra Kouzi: But how? How would you go about it if you had freedom to do it now?

Axel Arnö: I have freedom; I don't have time. I would probably go somewhere in rural Sweden. It's a big country, with many areas where we never really go and talk to people about their needs and what they want. I think we should do that. I don't know exactly how to do it, you know, how to have a dialog with the audience. Sometimes I'm not the best one; filmmakers might have a better recipe for finding their audiences. Because if you know who you are speaking to, if you know where you are coming from, it’s always good. But we also have different objectives sometimes, filmmakers and television. We are public; we need to reach the whole population and make sure that we can offer something for each and every one, and we should be everywhere in the nation.

Dimitra Kouzi: But what about rural Sweden? What is going on there?

Axel Arnö: I think, because there is a notion that we have the same development as in most European countries and the United States, that there is a growing disbelief about mainstream media, and that's bad for democracy. We should go out there and listen. And American media doesn't listen, and the way the media in Germany or the Netherlands do it is maybe too little. We have to be aware of what's going on.

Dimitra Kouzi: Offering programmes after listening to what the people say.

Axel Arnö: Perhaps yes, but we are the public broadcaster. We can't have groups of people that don't find the public broadcast interesting or that don’t take part in what we do. We need to be there for them as well, and there I think we’ve failed and we should be better. We have to try hard to find them.

Many people are not aware of what we are doing. When I tell some people what we offer, they find it fantastic. They just didn’t know. We need to be in people's agendas somehow.

Dimitra Kouzi: What is your personal listening and viewing habits? I know that you are a broadcast fan of these crime series. Or is it over?

Axel Arnö: You mean True Crime? I'm a bit tired of it. How much true crime can we have?

Dimitra Kouzi: I would like to hear you as audience, what are your personal viewing and listening habits?

Axel Arnö: Oh, I watch so much! But I mainly watch rough cuts, so I'm pretty damaged. Yet, I like to watch well-made series. O.J. Simpson: Made in America is very good; I like The Promise. That is a crime story, about a murder case in the U.S. I watch other series and documentaries, as well. In my spare time, I can watch Homeland or an arts and culture doc. I'm very curious, so if it's a good drama I will watch it. But I'm a journalism junkie, so if there is an investigative story with a personal touch, that will be my favourite. I saw a couple of great films at Sundance, such as Icarus; unfortunately, Netflix picked up many of them. It’s really hard for us to compete on American films. Of course, if a cool film premieres at Sundance with all rights available, Netflix will take it. I think they spent 20 million dollars on documentaries this year. Crazy.

Dimitra Kouzi: Is that good for the documentary industry?

Axel Arnö: Well, it's more money into the business. We as public broadcasters have to adapt by making more and better things ourselves. So, I had a discussion yesterday that we need to commit a bit earlier, work closer with the filmmakers that we like, and secure our territories. It's going to be a rights war for VOD rights. Because everybody wants sort of the same thing now.

Dimitra Kouzi: I wanted to ask you about VOD programmes.

Axel Arnö: Yes, we have to be as attractive as anyone. We have so much on our VOD platform. And it's free.

Dimitra Kouzi: I was talking to Simon Kilmurry about his job at POV, and he was telling me, of course they have a different structure there, that every time they launch a film they sit down together with the marketing and the communication departments and make a strategy for that. People don't know – that's the problem. Because we are the public broadcaster, we think that people know about it, but people don't.

Axel Arnö: I can give you one example of where we made a difference and how we treat the audience. We had a film called Cries from Syria, which is an HBO film by Evgeny Afineevsky. He was Oscar-nominated with his previous one, Winter on Fire. So, he made this film. It's about the victims in Syria. It's long, it's extremely graphic, and it's devastating to watch. You are filled with rage, sorrow, and despair. It’s an important film but very hard to watch. So, we made a special introduction where one of our news anchors interviewed Evgeny; then, there was the film, where we warned right before the most graphic images, and after the film, after almost two hours, we went to a studio discussion on Syria. This is how we can create an atmosphere around a film. Because the audience has many needs. And just because we did these things, I think the film landed very well. Had we not done anything, we might have had the audience against us. It got a lot of love, and it's spreading now. But it was a long discussion.

Dimitra Kouzi: I think that this is what all the event-based screenings in cinemas also do. That's why they are successful, they engage the audience to react. And these theme evenings are really something special, and should be on television, too.

Axel Arnö: How to create an audience is also marketing. If you have done a journalistic job, you need to use all your tools to make as many people as possible to watch it. We have our own trailers, of course, we have our audience, we have also sometimes used social media to promote what we do; we make small excerpts of the film, hoping they go viral. We have a newsletter with around 60,000 subscribers, in which every Sunday morning they get links to all the upcoming films and can watch them.

Dimitra Kouzi: On the VOD platform?

Axel Arnö: Yes. We try to engage with the audience as much as we can, and we can always be better. It's about the audience finding us, and us finding the audience. We also have focus groups. We have all the tools of a public broadcaster.

Dimitra Kouzi: You have focus groups and working groups? So, you talk with representatives from the audience?

Axel Arnö: My department does it all the time. And we have other tools, for example an audience group that have agreed to be interviewed by us, and that can be segmented according to education, age, everything. So, you can have a slice of that group and post questions to them, engage with them, and find out whether something works, if they understand it, if there something that would interest them. We use it more and more.

Dimitra Kouzi: Is this new?

Axel Arnö: That's new. We have done it in different ways before, such as focus groups, more irregularly; but now the tools are getting better.

Dimitra Kouzi: This is great. Do you know if other EBU members use that?

Axel Arnö: I would definitely think so.

Dimitra Kouzi: But you are very innovative, so I don't know if other countries from Eastern and Southern Europe do it.

Axel Arnö: I don't know. I get the impression that the broadcast world is getting a bit divided. Some of us are still going mostly for ratings. Ratings are still very important but will become less and less important. When we exchange statistics from the web, it seems that it's a big difference. So, it’s a beginning: We don't really know much about the web audience; we should know more about them.

Dimitra Kouzi: Can you elaborate a bit on exchanging internet clicks?

Axel Arnö: It's just the way we see the shift from broadcast to the web. People stop watching linear television, that group is getting bigger by the week, they cut out television from their habits. And then everything will be by choice – you will not just adapt to the programme because you are watching TV. You have to actively choose. So, what do you choose? And then, in that universe, we don't only have all the channels available in Sweden, but we also have all the VOD giants. So, it's completely different. And we don't know as much as we know about our television audience, because the television measuring system is very easy to work with, and then we know pretty much everything about these families. On the internet, how can you get the same depth of information for people sitting in front of a computer? We don't. Not yet. But I am told that new measuring tools are coming soon.

Dimitra Kouzi: I think this trend is something all EBU members together should explore. It's huge and it's there. You hear it all the time: ‘I don't watch television.’

Axel Arnö: Indeed. You can talk to the media director. Or the TV director. They will, now, because they do services, they develop tools, and they can speak more about how divided Europe is in terms of how people are watching TV.

Dimitra Kouzi: Do you think that these changes will also apply to documentary viewers?

Axel Arnö: Documentaries are at the forefront. Most people who watch documentaries will watch them online. Most people my age and downwards watch films on computers, on phones, or on the iPad, not on television.

Dimitra Kouzi: Then it makes sense that there are television broadcasters that screen documentaries at midnight, because nobody would watch them anyway.

Do you have any statistics for that from VOD, when do people watch documentaries?

Axel Arnö: No, I don't. But we should find out.

Dimitra Kouzi: Because the slots are very specific, and when you see the numbers, when people see documentaries, this could bring about change.

Last but not least, could you tell me what documentary slots or whatever the documentaries at SVT are? You have the current affairs, you have feature length etc. Just briefly tell me what is being broadcast as documentaries.

Axel Arnö: We have many slots. Weekly, we have a lot of prime-time slots. But let's go through the week: First of all, we publish every Sunday for the coming week. Then, on that Sunday night is the first slot, a 60-minute slot at 10 o'clock. And that is about 35-40 programmes per year, comprising the best journalistic documentaries that I can find. It's topical: films about war in Syria, about U.S. elections, French elections. My ideal is that by watching these programmes you will understand what's happening in the world. Whereas the news is only fragments, this will be the whole picture. And then, I have a feature-length slot, like a year-round film festival, where I try to find the most talked about, the best new awarded films made in the world. I try to be part of them. And that's also about 35mm films. Then we have the domestic documentaries, films about Sweden. And that's a weekly 60-minute prime-time slot, Thursdays at 8 o'clock.

Dimitra Kouzi: When is the feature documentary film festival?

Axel Arnö: It's at 22.00 on Tuesdays. They are pretty strong on the web. People find them. I try to find documentaries that are oriented to the festival crowd. But in a really cinematic festival, like Nyon, a film will probably have a slow, poetic narrative, because that's what you do in cinema films. On TV or the web, the landscape is the opposite, you need to have a really strong narrative. In the cinema, films should have a good ending. In the TV or web landscape, you won’t survive without a strong start. Unless a film has had a prior life on cinema and people have a previous knowledge about it. But if you haven't seen or heard about a film, I think the start is everything. That's a message to filmmakers. Everything is about the audience. You have to hook them, and then tell them your story.

Dimitra Kouzi: At pitching, nobody asks how a film begins; everybody wants to know the end.

Axel Arnö: That's just to create an image in your head about what this person is trying to achieve. I think audiences nowadays are so spoiled with really strong storytelling that it also creates new demands for super-strong, skilful storytelling docs. There are now experiments, hiring feature script writers for writing the script for a doc, even if it is in production. Because you will have an A plot, a B plot, a C plot, and you need to know what to do with it. There is also an increased demand for series, but they are a bit harder for a broadcaster to place in their schedules. Sometimes we can, sometimes we can't. But on the web, everything is possible of course.

Dimitra Kouzi: But this is another trend, series.

Axel Arnö: Yes, it's a different thing: Some films work well as series. The Promise is a good example, because that film was made as a two-hour special, two times 90′, three times 60′, and six times 25′. That’s a good case study; it’s interesting to explore the different demands from different broadcasters.

I think that BBC broadcast the feature version, the one-time version. And then, simultaneously they put out the six-times 25′. And they had a million views the first week on the series.

Dimitra Kouzi: It’s interesting, but it makes sense, because the audience is different.

Axel Arnö: Yes, but if you want to talk about how to create an audience, you also have to be aware of that: different formats will probably suit different audiences. So, of course, you should do your director's cut, which is important for you. But then, it would also be good if you are open to cutting it in different lengths, because there might be different audiences out there for the film. Sometimes it's impossible because of budget constraints.

Dimitra Kouzi: Let’s go back to the slots.

Axel Arnö: Domestic is on Thursdays. Then we have cultural slots – that’s not my department – both domestic and international, every Friday at 8 o'clock. But, of course, super prime time on Friday is very difficult because there are very popular shows all around. But they are doing a good job. My acquisition colleagues are buying loads more topics – nature, history, wildlife. They have also started to buy Channel-4-type docs, which is more sensational. And, of course, they get an audience. So, there are many hours of docs. My responsibility is the current affairs and the feature-length slots. I do different things, as well, Swedish films, special projects.

Dimitra Kouzi: Budgets are not increasing to cater for the need to create impact campaigns around the films by the producers.

Axel Arnö: I'm not paying more because they need to make impact.

Dimitra Kouzi: Exactly, it's in the budget, and it has to be covered by the budget.

Axel Arnö: Yes, but that makes sense; we have to be independent, so, we can't fund the impact production. That's why they have things like Good Pitch. These are problems we can't cope with. They raise funds. For example, Borneo Case is now starting its tour, and I'm in discussions about when SVT should broadcast it. They've got some money from impact, from other sources. Could be interesting to talk to them about their impact campaign.

Axel Arnö became a Commissioning Editor at SVT in 1998. Previously a newspaper reporter. Since his move to national television, Axel has been reporter, editor and editorial executive. He became the Editor of SVT’s flagship current affairs magazine Striptease and later created the investigative documentary strand Dokument inifrån. Since 2004, he works at SVT’s documentary department, dealing mainly with international co-productions (current affairs, creative, social documentaries). He was an original partner in the Why Democracy? series. Axel is chairman of the Eurovision Documentary Group.

This interview was edited for clarity and brevity by Dimitris Saltabassis

Communion EFA Winner European Documentary 2017

January 9, 2018 Dimitra Kouzi Leave a comment

Communion by Anna Zamecka, EFA Winner European Documentary 2017!

Watch the trailer https://vimeo.com/242040534

EFA awards, EN, Festivals, People

Make the most out of your premiere at idfa

October 23, 2017 Dimitra Kouzi Leave a comment

Audience development builds awareness for a film in competition with both industry and viewers, and increases your chances to win a prize. Audience development can also take your career as a producer or director to the next level by developing your personal networking scope with decision-makers and press to know your latest film and support your next one.

Audience development means bringing people and cultures closer; it engages people and communities in experiencing, enjoying, and valuing arts and culture. The idea is to expand visibility and awareness, to diversify the audience, and to deepen the relationship with existing audiences.
The specialist involved in an audience development campaign – audience developer, communication strategist, outreach/impact producer – designs a strategy using tools including the press, social media, graphic design, posters, flyers, ambassadors, an expanded network, personally engages in matchmaking during the festival and guides you through the festival's opportunities.

The goal of outreach is to make an impact for a film or a festival. There is no recipe, no standard procedure – the fascinating thing about it is it's tailor-made for you and your film! It's all about networking, experience, and timing.

If you want to talk about your film premiering at IDFA and its possibilities, contact [email protected].

Dimitra Kouzi has designed and implemented audience development for:

La Chana, IDFA audience award 2016

Nowhere to Hide, best feature length documentary IDFA 2016

21 X New York, European Film Academy 2016 Nominated Best Documentary

Communion, European Film Academy 2017 Selected Best Documentary

EN, Press Kit

Communion

September 28, 2017 Dimitra Kouzi Leave a comment

For the Electronic Press Kit of Communion in PDF format,

click here.

Critics’ teaser: https://youtu.be/fNL4FyUHLdA

(Clicking on image above opens it in high resolution)

More high-quality images you can use:

EN, Festivals, KinderDocs, Screenings-Events

How to Reach a Young Audience

September 24, 2017 Dimitra Kouzi Leave a comment

Kinderdocs second edition (2017–18) is here!

KinderDocs is a documentary festival of award-winning films made for or addressed to children and teenagers, as well as their teachers, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and their friends! KinderDocs provides a platform for discovering the magic of documentaries and exploring new ways of cross-generation communication, inspired by stories we all care about, and for having fun. Each film is a story on teenage life, friendship, family, relationships, education, creativity, art, music, dance, psychology, migration, environment.

Each film is an opportunity for constructive dialogue and after-screening events, building tomorrow’s thinking viewers today. Pioneering new locations for docs and young audiences, KinderDocs is held in the two largest contemporary art museums in Greece, in collaboration with the museums' education departments: the Benaki Museum (Athens) and the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki). The documentary film is a contemporary art form, which speaks to the hearts and minds of young people of all ages!

KinderDocs programme for schools takes place on weekdays at 10:00. Educators click here for more information. Screenings for the whole family and friends take place on weekends at 12:00. More info here.

The festival is a regular meeting opportunity, held once a month both in Athens and Thessaloniki starting in October 2017 through to April 2018. Produced by Kouzi Productions, it is supported by the biggest documentary festival in Europe – idfa (The Netherlands) and the oldest documentary festival for kids doxs! (Germany).

Check out KinderDocs 2017–18 programme.

Dimitra Kouzi
KinderDocs Artistic Director & Producer

EFA awards, EN, Interviews, People

21 ✕ Questions on 21 ✕ New York

November 30, 2016 Dimitra Kouzi Leave a comment

21 ✕ Questions to the Polish director Piotr Stasik on his EFA-nominated feature-length documentary film 21 ✕ New York

What is your favourite interview question?
I don’t have such a question.

Why New York? What does it mean to you? Why 21?
I chose New York because it’s like a laboratory of the future, of how our life will look like in the future. I thought it’s a city where you can feel free and where you can make your dreams come true. This is one of the myths of this city that attracts people who are outsiders, who look for something more. In New York, these people seek home and others that are similar to them. A whole world comes to this place – to live, work, express themselves creatively. It is the capital of the world.
The number 21 occurs in the film a few times. We’ve got 21 characters – people I met in the NYC Subway. The age of the main protagonist is 21 – as is the century we live in.
I chose 21 characters because it’s a number of people that offers a chance to show a cross-section of a society. I’m a sociologist by education. In the beginning, this film was more of a scientific research, participatory observation.

You refer to yourself as "a harmless vampire documentalist". How did you choose your interview subjects?
Vampire – because we documentary filmmakers suck in other people’s emotions and stories like blood. We thrive on them and create our films with them. Harmless – because when we do it right, we act ethically, we do not harm our protagonists – on the contrary. Often, their participation in the film is for them a moment of joint creation, and watching themselves on the screen can be an opportunity for self-analysis, to find something about themselves, even therapy.
My research included collecting different stories. These were not interviews; rather, more like conversations where the topic came out naturally. I told them my story, and then asked them about the most important things and events in their lives. The most common topics were relationships, loneliness and being lost, confused. They came up in almost all conversations. Of course, I somehow asked for it too by intuitively choosing such protagonists and by taking the conversations in certain directions. However, to what extent I interfered and to what extent it was a reflection of a real situation – this I wouldn’t know. Loneliness is the disease not only of big cities but also of our times. Comfort and prosperity, combined with the abundance of stimuli and possibilities, create a situation where we either meticulously direct and stage our life, making it predictable and, eventually, boring, or, on the other hand, we spread ourselves thin, we can’t focus on anything, we cannot work for a longer period of time on ourselves, on relations with other people. One of my female protagonists told me that there’s no use working on the relationship with her boyfriend when new, more attractive men are already lining up just behind the corner, or in an app. In the more extreme situations, people check their tinder in bed, when having sex. Maybe it’s just how our brain functions. When we achieve something, we get used to it and we want something else. Sebastian, a newcomer in New York like myself, observes what’s going on and talks about what is at the end of this spiral. He is my alter ego.

How does it feel to be inside the heads of your characters?
I wanted the viewers to feel as if they could, or that they did, enter my characters’ minds for a while. Hence, the form. It’s like becoming a God for a moment – to know the thoughts of people passed by in the subway.

Did you have a clear idea of what the film would look like before filming?
It was like an experiment, like anthropological research with a camera. I go underground like an anthropologist, like Bronislaw Malinowski on Trobriand Islands but, instead of in a notebook, I make my notes in the camera. Sometimes, I felt as if I were making a new version of “The Sexual Lives of Savages”. I didn’t know how the film would end but I knew its structure and form from the beginning. I had a script, with probable dialogues even.

Which photographers inspire you?
I look at photographs of many authors – mostly Cartier-Bresson or Michael Ackerman. I’m addicted to browsing through photography albums in bookstores. It was with photography that I started my adventure with image and film when, as a 15-year-old boy, I photographed kitschy compositions with metal junk.

What did your instinct help you to do while you were shooting? My instinct helps me to choose potential protagonists for my film from thousands of people I pass by. Instinct combined with experience helps me to decide where to put the camera, when to press the record button, what to ask, how to shake reality in order for something interesting to happen right in front of the lens. My master, Marcel Łoziński, says that reality is like an aquarium – the fish swim lazily and only at scarce moments does something happen. So as to make that ‘something’ happen exactly when we want it, we need to interfere somehow. That’s what documentary directing is about. With small gestures, energy, or just using body language, we can stimulate the characters to open themselves, to take actions.

Tell me of “magical” moments.
When one of my characters introduced himself with the words, “I am you”. I got shivers down my spine. Also, I often feel very moved during editing, and I can only hope that my viewers would feel moved as well. That is why it is so important for me to achieve a certain level of focus. One of such methods is the rite of passage that allows you to transcend your own self. In the case of this film it was total exhaustion. This allowed me to immerse in the city, melt into it and become one with it. Recording the footage felt like swimming, or like a long, day-and-night dance with the inhabitants of New York.

The camera work in combination with the sound/music creates a certain feeling in the viewer; it keeps them captivated while witnessing from up close life through the subjects. Tell us about your method of cinematography.
I wanted the viewer to be like in a state of trance, to contemplate the world, to travel into the thoughts and lives of other people. We switch from one character to the other as if we were changing channels on TV. On the surface, nothing connects the protagonists apart from the place. I recorded the film with an unscrewed lens. By doing that, I stained the immaculate clarity of the digital image. It became more emotional, more subjective. The camera set I put together is very small and relatively quick and easy to use. Thanks to this, it does not feel intrusive during conversations, during my ‘dancing’. I don’t have to be only a filmmaker, I become the participant of events without harming the quality of the recording.

10. Why do you do documentaries?
It is to me a way of looking for the answer how to live and what to live for. A way of living in a more curious and more emotional way. The camera gives me a chance to visit places and ask questions I normally wouldn’t, out of lack of courage.

Do you “flirt” with fiction?
Of course. One of my characters is almost completely invented. I won’t tell which one. The world changes; our sensitivity changes with it. The film language has to change too. We look for new tricks but the truth is we’ve been telling the same tales for thousands of years. We need to surprise our audience with new things that make them forget about reality but at the same time allow them to feel it’s about them.

Do you have an obsession?
My obsession is the constant fight for time. Not wasting it on useless, petty issues like checking news on the Internet. Our lives are more and more dependent on some kind of a logarithm. After all, Facebook’s aim is not to nurture our friendships, or love, at all. These social media guys sit there and think how to make us buy their tricks.
Big money and most talented people work now on how to suck in the biggest amount of people for the longest period of time and make us addicted to “using”. We – and our kids, too – are helpless and bound to be defeated.

What do you have against conventions?
Conventions enable us to make decisions faster, but at the same time they work as internal shackles. Imprinted within us, they don’t allow us to see our real needs, to live in the truth and in agreement with ourselves.

What do all your films have in common?
My films are a constant journey and contemplation of the world. It’s a geographic journey as well as an inward journey into human existence – into the mind and, hopefully, into the soul.

What do you mean when you say “we live in a bubble”?
Did I say that? Maybe I meant the Internet. We move part of our consciousness into the Internet, into a virtual world, believing it’s real. We don’t have to remember many things, because we can check them instantly, we don’t have time to meet with our real friends but at the same time we maintain superficial relations with 200 or even 1000 friends on Facebook.

Did having a family change your attitude towards your art? Life?
I don’t understand the question.

Why do you say that we have no clue about what is going on around us?
The Internet changes our everyday behaviour; it influences our relations; it seduces us, making us addicted. We don’t know what its influence on our lives will be in the long run – on our emotions, selection of partners – ultimately, on our souls.

How can someone be happy?
Happiness is an overrated and abused term. Everybody wants to be happy on a daily basis. This is impossible. This compulsive aim to be happy directs the attention towards us; it’s the basis for everything else.
However, as imperfect creatures, we are bound to suffer, to feel discontent; we are destined to build imperfect institutions and countries; our body switches off the older we become. Only if we accept this, can we reach an agreement with ourselves and achieve balance – maybe this is the state we should call happiness?

What makes you happy?
In general, giving to others. I experience that especially when I teach. This is all about giving your energy to other people, who then disappear from your sight and then suddenly sometime someday you hear that you’ve changed someone’s life.

Tell us about the project you work on now in Poland?
An opera about Poland. It’s a combination of a documentary film and contemporary opera. The libretto consists mainly of small ads from local newspapers and Internet blogs. It’s an attempt to describe the spiritual state of Poles, the release of some behaviours and habits that are related to choices we make in our private and public lives. I thought I was making a film about Poland, but at foreign screenings people say that it’s also a story about their own emotions towards their countries – something between being pissed off and being sentimental.

Where will you put the EFA award?
I don’t believe I’ll get it.

Doc-making, EN, Festivals, Interviews, People

Interview La Chana, IDFA’s Audience Award 2016

November 27, 2016 Dimitra Kouzi Leave a comment

La Chana is the portrait of the self-taught Gypsy dancer, Antonia Santiago Amado, an amazing flamenco dancer and with it the personal story of a now elderly woman. Excellent editing with archival dance scenes and highlights of her career (here with Peter Sellers in The Bobo). Full of humour and passion, a great scene where she talks about Dali, how he attended her performances bringing along his “cat”, his leopard, which was upset by her tap-dancing and roared!

Lucija Stotevic the director and producer of the film originally comes from Croatia, but moved to Austria when she was 6. While studying architecture in Edinburgh, she discovered she loved film more, so she moved to the Czech Republic to study film for one very intensive year. After that, she moved to Barcelona, Spain, and started to work for production companies and independently doing video journalism for newspapers like The Guardian. La Chana was the reason why she set up her own production company. She produced and directed this feature-length documentary against all the financial obstacles for a newcomer. The film has participated in a series of workshops, such as EsoDoc and Rough Cut Boutique. Four years later, La Chana was premiering at Idfa Panorama and was also nominated for the best female-directed film. While this interview was taking place in her co-working space in Barcelona, her seven-month-old daughter was one floor above, playing in the baby facility provided by this co-working space.

Is it common in Spain to have a baby facility if you are a working woman? No, it’s a completely new thing; we are pioneers and trying it out. I was like, “This is perfect” because, she is depending on me, but I need to work. My poor baby is seven months old and has been to five countries in seven months.

So, you were pregnant while doing the film? During the editing process, my belly was just growing. So, I was thinking, if she doesn't have a sense of rhythm, I will be surprised. She is getting so much flamenco, she’d better have a good sense of rhythm.

Do you think your background in architecture influences this way of reacting and thinking? This structure you have, is it coming from there? There are overlaps between film and architecture. For example, in the working process, in both film and architecture, you work on different aspects and still always have an overall picture the whole time, too. It’s also a echnical and creative mix, and I think there are a lot of crossovers, which is actually why I got into film. I did my final project on editing theory in film and architecture and was looking at how these two things can influence each other in the creative process, in the way you think about montage and architecture and construction, and the way you think about montage and constructing through sequences in storytelling. There is similarity. During that period, I became much more interested in film than architecture, so my boyfriend at the time told me, ‘You seem so much more into the film aspect, why don't you just go to film school?’ and I thought that actually was not such a bad idea.

How did you meet La Chana?
I met her through my teacher, Beatriz del Pozo. La Chana is her ‘maestro’. Beatriz always talks about La Chana, about her rhythms, about her beats, about how she had fallen into the shadows and she shouldn't have because she is an amazing, wonderful artist and does things nobody else had done. She put some videos on for me when I was at her house, of La Chana dancing and I was just dumbstruck. I think the one that really struck me was the one where La Chana was dancing in The Bobo [the Peter Sellers film], where she is nineteen years old and looks like she is forty – the passion and the pain and the suffering – she was like a sorceress!
Beatriz suggested that we meet so we went to her home, and she prepared an amazing paella for us. She was very open with me from the beginning in terms of what happened to her, she just told me everything. There was so much story here, and this character was amazing. She could carry a film as an individual character – nothing else was necessary. I proposed we start working together, and the first thing she told me was, ‘OK, come to the party on Saturday. I am having my whole family here, but only you can come, you can’t bring any men with you, no camera guys, and if my family ask you, tell them that you are a student of mine.’ She was very careful, and what worried her the most was her own environment, and how they were going to react if they knew she was doing this film. But then, little by little, she became much more open about this.

It does come across in the film that she has this worry about how others will think of things and that she was always between these two things, what do others think and what is my own soul telling me. Exactly, very much so. It has always been a struggle for her, this combination of ‘this is me, this is what I want, what I am feeling and this is what I am supposed to be doing.

How did you deal with all these layers of her character, all these directions the film could take?
There were many directions the film could have taken, as there were many elements to deal with: her art, the social circumstances, the abuse. But I think going into general topics would have been a mistake. So, it was very important that we just stick to the core, and let her lead it, and just look more how these different things influenced her, rather than what they are. And La Chana’s core is her dance, her art. That’s why there is a narrative told through the transformation of the way you perceive her dance in the film. When you watch the early part of the film and you discover who she was, you see her dancing and you think, ‘Wow, amazing dancer,’ but it’s only when you find out those different obstacles that she had, that her dances take on other meanings, other layers. You understand all that emotional charge then. That was very important to me, that we go to where her core is – her music, her rhythm, her dance – and to do that we should understand her pain and her suffering and her environment, and her tragedy, and stay close to that.

I could see the passion of La Chana but I could also feel your passion in doing this film. I am sure you had difficulties in many ways to make it. How did you balance these two roles – director and producer?
I think the way the documentary world is today, if I look at it from the producers’ perspective, most people would have just put this film into the drawer looking at it in terms of financing and what was possible to raise, unfortunately. That was one of my worries initially, because we started this film exactly when the crisis hit, so we had the problem that the arts were the first thing to get cut – production companies were closing left, right and centre. Everybody was telling me, ‘We love the film, we love the idea but we don't know if we are going to survive one more year, and it will be very difficult to get funding for your film.’ We had a lot of interest also at the international level, but this was complicated, because of the fact that it is character-driven, a human-interest story, but of a character who is not so well-known outside of Spain – I mean she is not so well known inside of Spain either, except to the older generation. Only Spanish is spoken, and it was very hard to find co-producers who could do anything. In the end, I established a production company in order to be able to produce it, and then we eventually started getting interest from a direct audience. We ended up raising a huge part, more than 50% of our budget, from individuals. Otherwise, it would have been impossible. It was funded by women mostly. Women wanted to watch this film.

In a film like La Chana it is important that you are a woman. Do you think that the fact that you were a woman filmmaker made her trust you and open up to tell her story? Was it important that you were a woman?
I think so. She grew up in such a macho society that I think there are certain things that she would certainly not share with a man. It made it easier for her to relate to me and open up to me. Initially, one of the things I was worried about is that I am a foreigner and I think that played as an advantage for me because, especially in the beginning, she didn't feel threatened by me. She thought ‘the girl with the funny accent’, you know (laughing). That, in some way, helped her to relax.

You are not only stubborn, but very smart, too. I wanted to ask you a bit more about flamenco?
I am interested from an intellectual point of view but you can’t be shy and perform in flamenco. I absolutely adore it and I loved learning it, but I wouldn't describe myself as a flamenco dancer. In order to be really good, you need to be really raw and really let everything come out; show everything that you are. In flamenco for it to work you have to let all that fall, and I am too private of a person to do that.

In the film, you talk about the aging process, the loss of acceptance, but also the reinvention. You manage to do this very smoothly. I wanted to hear more about that coming from you, what are your thoughts about aging and reinvention?
What La Chana shows us in a very nice way is that you have to accept the passing of time and that you can do something with it; you don’t have to just sit there and do nothing anymore. She demonstrates it so beautifully, that you can’t let your passions die even if you are physically getting older. You have to find a way to change them into a format that you can still enjoy.

Through the film, you helped her do this also, to go back.
We kind of inspired her to go back on stage, which she loves; she loves the attention, she loves the audience, but she also loves being filmed. She is living with memories but quite isolated. Now, I think we won’t be able to stop her anymore (laughing) – she wants to go everywhere and is going to be the great diva again, and she will do anything.

What was her reaction when she saw the film?
She always said she prayed for us (the film team), but when I showed her the film in January she told me she stopped praying for me. Over a nine-month period.

Why?
She hated it; she had a really hard time with it, which was normal. I mean, I was expecting her to react, but she reacted very strongly. It might sound sadistic and horrible, but i thought, ‘OK, this is a good sign’. Because if she loved it from the beginning, it means we didn’t really go under the surface. It had to affect her; it wouldn't be normal if it didn’t affect her because it’s her life. There is a psychological process she never went through. It was extremely difficult, and she was very angry at me, but by the time we showed her a final version, after many months had passed, she had had time to process it and now stands behind it.

This is the films Trailer. The film won the audience award at IDFA 2016. Shoot in Barcelona, here is the video message to accept the award.

EN, Festivals, Interviews, People

Interview with Zaradasht Ahmed, dir. Nowhere to Hide

November 24, 2016 Dimitra Kouzi 1 Comment

Interview by Zaradasht Ahmed, director Nowhere to Hide IDFA Award for Best Feature-Length Documentary, to Dimitra Kouzi.

How did you get involved with this story?
Zaradasht Ahmed: The idea started in Afghanistan, back in 2008. The mainstream media was not telling the whole truth about the American and Coalition invasion of Afghanistan and its fight against Al-Qaeda and Taliban, so together with Dr. Husum (a human rights activist and war surgeon), we worked to recruit local medics and journalists to document first-hand information from areas where most of the media did not have access. We initially wanted to make a film on this “new war”. We called the project “the new war machine”. We focused on exploring the type of war: what it is; is it different; is it between countries (a frontal war); or is it transborder warfare without fronts. Two years later, in 2010, we moved the concept to Iraq. I was sure that this “new war” would emerge in cities there. That was our main intention. We started with that idea, but gradually we ended up with a character-based, very intense film about Nori. In this case, it was the situation that drove me to change the direction of the film, and not the other way round.

How did you meet Nori?
Nori was one of the twelve medics we trained in Iraq. He singled himself out by being very interested in documenting and filming in the areas called “no-go zones”; places organisations, doctors and journalists do not have access to. He did not know much about filming to start with, but he was interested, and he had the will. That is how it started. Nori comes from one of these “no-go zones” – a town called Jalawla, in Diayala Province in central Iraq.

Your origin is Kurdish and you live in Norway. How did you get there?
We eventually moved our “base” to Sulaymaniyah in Northern Iraq, where I originally come from. Diyala Province is three and a half hours from where I lived, and it is my mother’s home town. The medical organisation led by Dr. Husum and the local Kurdish doctor, Dr. Modhafar, was based in Sulaymaniyah, so it was natural that we ended up there. In addition, Sulaymaniyah is a safe base to work from.

You don't live in Sulaymaniyah anymore. How many years have you been living in Norway?
I have lived in Norway for 22 years.

Do you feel privileged because of that, or do you feel in as if you are still in exile? What is your relation to your home country?
After getting Norwegian citizenship I can move freely, and that makes me feel privileged. I have been living in exile since the early 1990s, soon to be 26 years now, so it is difficult to compare my situation to Nori’s. Nori has been forced to leave his home and has been placed in an IDP camp (a camp for Internally Displaced People), and it is important not to mix the terms “Internally Displaced People” with “people in exile”. I chose to leave because of the political situation in my country; Nori was forced. Therefore, my interest in following Nori’s story is not due to our similarities, to be honest. My other film, Fata Morgana, was about exile and the desire to seek a better life elsewhere.

You worked on this film for five long years.
I like long-term documentaries. I like to spend years on my films, on my subjects, on my characters because I believe that film is storytelling. It is also about some unique moments that we call the moments of truth. These moments won’t happen unless you spend a lot of time with your characters, you have to get behind many layers to reach the heart of what the feeling is; and the truth is often found under all these layers.

How much is your original footage in the film, and how much is Nori’s footage? When it comes to the footage, the entire shooting of the film has been a complicated process spanning over five years. We started with collecting material from several sources. Following the dramaturgy of the film, you could break it up simply like this: The first act is shot mainly by me, but when Nori starts to be trapped in Jalawla, he is on his own, and the first-hand accounts from the fall of the town, the collapse of the hospital through the fleeing all the way to the IDP camp was shot by Nori. Towards the end of the film, the scenes of returning to the hospital and the entire final act are mainly shot by me again.

How much material did you have? 300–400 hours.

How did you manage to make this storyline emerge out of all this material?
It is really difficult to answer that question. It is the result of team work. By being open to the changes, allowing me to go further, to focus more on Nori and his personal point of view. We went from a story with questions such as: “Is it possible to live in a war without fronts, without a visible army of only faceless solders?” to a personal story of one man and his family trying to survive a highly brutal warfare, told in a dramatic film. That was a major change for us. One of the toughest challenges making the film was not the material itself, but the need to pursue that material further, because once you start following a character you have to put all your effort into him, and you need to build the scenes that will enable you to create that storyline. In the middle of this process, Nori’s town became a living hell; suddenly ISIS came and the hospital was being bombed, he was targeted and had to flee with his family. At this point we could not leave him there, we had to keep following. I found myself sitting for days and nights in Iraq because I had no access into the area, as it was controlled by ISIS. So I was calling, directing, helping, cheering him up and constantly talking to him, because he felt really down during that phase.

To read the complete interview in PDF format click HERE

Dimitra Kouzi – Kouzi Productions

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Interview La Chana, IDFA’s Audience Award 2016

Interview with Zaradasht Ahmed, dir. Nowhere to Hide

documentary production | outreach | audience development | storytelling

Dimitra Kouzi (29/1/2018)

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documentary production | outreach | audience development | storytelling