After the March debut of his latest documentary, “Observer,” at Copenhagen’s CPH:DOX, director Ian Cheney took the film on a tour across the United States. Instead of doing the typical film festival circuit, Cheney and the team behind “Observer” have spent the last six months hosting free interactive events centered around the film.
On Wednesday, the film will kick off the 21st annual Camden International Film Festival. That screening will be followed by an immersive observation experience inspired by the doc.
In the 95-minute doc, Cheney brings a series of keen-eyed observers — scientists, artists, and a hunter — to a range of locations around the world and asks them to describe what they see. What unfolds is a thought-provoking journey into the simple but transformative act of observing.
“Observer” is a contemplative, poetic study of slowing down and taking stock. It’s not the kind of celebrity or true-crime documentary that the major streamers crave. Cheney knew that there wouldn’t be a bidding war following the film’s Copenhagen premiere, so he came up with a distribution plan of his own.
“I think it would be pretty easy to start getting frustrated and feel pretty down about ourselves and filmmaking if we were waiting and waiting and waiting for streamers to call us back and distribute this film,” Cheney said during a recent “Observer” event in Cambridge, Mass. “So instead, we are focusing on directly engaging people with the film.”
With documentary distribution in crisis mode, all but a handful of doc filmmakers have been forced to find new and creative solutions to ensure that their films reach audiences. Cheney has made 14 feature documentaries, including “King Corn” and “The Most Unknown,” which Netflix acquired in 2018. Five years later, when Cheney released his 12th feature doc, “The Arc of Oblivion,” the “golden age of documentaries” was over. So the director eventized the film’s distribution by holding screenings in a wooden ark – a structure that was featured in “The Arc of Oblivion.” (“The Arc of Oblivion” is now available on TVOD.)
By taking over the initial distribution of his recent documentaries and creating an event around them, Cheney has generated interest and excitement around his films.
So far, “Observer” has screened in over 30 locations across the country, including San Francisco, rural Wisconsin, and Hartford, Connecticut. After each screening, audience members divide into small groups and are given various activities to do that are meant to spark new ways of thinking. Cheney and his team attend the interactive daylong “Observer” events, which include a screening of the film, lunch, hands-on exploration, dialogue, and reflection on the art of observation. The daylong “Observer” events are approximately six hours and funded by The Wonder Collaborative, the feature film unit of the Science Communication Lab.
The invitation for the event states that the goal of the day is simple – “to take time away from our busy lives to explore and celebrate the patient power of observation.”
“My hope is that people feel that they have been invited into something and we aren’t expecting anything in return,” says Cheney. “It’s not transactional, and that can be confusing to people. During lunch, after a screening, someone asked me, ‘What are you getting out of this?’ I was a little bit stumped at the time, but I think, on some level, I’m getting wonder and joy.”
Cheney added that spending a day with strangers and doing various activities based in observation motivates him.
“The experience of having a film on a big streamer is, on the one hand, a big ego boost because you can tell people at dinner parties that your movie is on Netflix,” Cheney says. “But there is not really much engagement with that audience. These “Observer” experiences are so direct that you go home and are like, ‘Oh yeah. This is why we do this.’ So, in some sense, we are curating an event that reminds us why we make these films.”
The next “Observer” day will take place on Sept. 26 on New York’s Governor’s Island.
The Wonder Collaborative funded “Observer.”
