I like to let myself feel encouraged when the conversation topic turns to “the golden age of documentary”, and I believe it’s true that we are witnessing an embracing and broadening of storytelling forms and structures of the medium. Yet in direct opposition to that, we’re hearing more and more about the pressures to conform to what the algorithm says is best.
This Hollywood Reporter (Inside the Documentary Cash Grab) piece discusses the idea in detail. And then, I read separate pieces from Firelight Media (Beyond Resilience: Indigenous Forms) and POV Magazine (An Interview with Parastoo Anoushahpour on Sexuality, Identity, and Language), which were not explicitly about that concept, but seemed to be in conversation with it. They remind us why it is so important it is to make space for a diversity of storytelling forms and voices; how artists need to be allowed to juggle what is gained and lost by tailoring projects to different, wider, or more focused audiences; and ultimately how catering to algorithms can function more like rut-digging entropy machines that are quite the opposite of creative or evolutionary pursuits.