“We are at a moment when cynicism and division are abundant, but we have seen that stories can bring people together,” Ms. Powell Jobs said by email. “Concordia is a belief that film has the power to shine a spotlight on the important narratives of life that too often are overlooked.”
The studio also has three documentary series in the works at Netflix. And Concordia can already call itself an Oscar nominee, after its short film, “Walk, Run, Cha Cha,” produced for The New York Times’s Op-Docs series, landed a spot in the short subject documentary category.
Concordia won’t limit itself to documentaries. This month, it started a division for scripted feature films led by Jonathan King, who spent 12 years at Participant Media creating popular movies that touched on social concerns. He said Concordia’s scripted movies are likely to address education, immigration, the environment and civil rights.
“Those are all things we care about and want to tell stories about,” Mr. King said. “But it’s never going to be an issue-driven slate. It will be filmmaker- and story-driven.”
Joe Berlinger, a veteran documentary filmmaker, said it was wise for any studio with “good storytelling chops” to expand into multiple genres because of the seemingly bottomless appetite for material at Netflix, Disney Plus and other streaming services.
“When I started in this business with 1992’s ‘Brother’s Keeper,’ if you didn’t sell your documentary to HBO or PBS, you weren’t selling your documentary,” Mr. Berlinger said by email.
Now, thanks in part to the demand brought on by the rise of streaming, he noted, A-list directors like Ron Howard and Martin Scorsese are making documentaries, and independent documentary filmmakers like himself have signed on to direct fictional feature films.
Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/20/business/media/sundance-festival-concordia.html?emc=rss&partner=rss
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