Development Cooperation Handbook/The video resources linked to this handbook/The Documentary Story/Distribution as a another story

Distribution as a another story

We decided to continue to narrate our story including the effort we were taking for finding a distributor. In a sense the story of how a media product is distributed can never be a part of the story of the product itself, because it has to be completed before you go for distributing it. But this is really a deficiency of the story. Because distribution is the main challenge. Everything gets sense only as far as distribution is a success. So how can we miss in the story the most important part of it?

In many cases the logic of distribution dictates all the terms to the logics of production and postproduction. In such cases there is no real sense to tell the story of the distribution because it is first pre-conceived and then super-imposed on the whole product.

But in our case it is different. We had a research to do which was independent from any distribution logics. We follow an organic thread that we did not know where it will lead to. We did not know if we will get the right answers to our search. Then we did not know is we would have been able to rearrange the whole answer in a meaningful product. And surely we do not know now if we would be successful in the distribution effort. So we need to put the distribution challenge at the core of our story.

So we decided to keep on producing and editing this portion of the story until the end. We wanted to include  in the documentary also “the faces” of the distributors. This was in line with the whole spirit of our documentary where we challenged the false plenteousness of “news neutrality” or news “objectivity” and we highlighted the value of the subjectivity of all actors taking part in the project. We wanted a documentary which does not pretend to present “facts” to a passive viewer, but a documentary  that is an an “act”. We wanted to make an invitation to the viewer not to be passive, but put his subjectivity also on board and take a side in the challenges of creating a healthier communication environment amongst the nations. That is the meaning of “Vrinda”, i.e. "choice". Make your "subjective" choice. And that is what makes history. We do not need dead and mummified "facts"; but living and sharable "acts". And that is why we need the Vrinda Project approach.

Next ⇒  Community as distributor

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