Recently new media have brought forward a revolution. Particularly in the western world, the internet and digital television create new opportunities for audiovisual content. The spreading of user-generated content has started off enormously, thanks to sites such as My Space and You Tube. These new developments effect all audiovisual content, but in this article I will focus on documentaries.

Why documentaries? Because in my opinion this genre is made for Internet distribution. To fully understand a documentary the viewers mind must be active and willing to reframe every single minute. As the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam defines: “Documentaries are not fleeting, but hold a mirror up to our times. They are able to stimulate the viewer and provoke thought, by approaching the news from a different angle; by placing different accents, applying a slower rhythm, an original point of view. Documentaries stimulate the viewer to think further, to discuss, to ask questions”. Visiting the IDFA is a complete different experience compared to visiting fiction festival. You can’t just sit in your chair and absorb the film. Documentary viewers are forced to get out of their comfort zone, as the big cozy chair will start to itch sooner or later.

Tons of itching powder have been scattered in my chair by the IDFA. For example during China Blue, a painful documentary made inside a blue jeans factory, where young workers (mostly female) are trying to survive a harsh working environment. The doc is shot clandestinely in China, and shows us what both China and the international retail companies don’t want us to see – how the clothes we buy are actually made. When the credits were rolling the viewer next to me angrily looked at my blue jeans… I never felt so guilty about wearing trousers. And that’s exactly the function of a documentary, to create awareness in some sort of way.

But then, why Internet distribution? Nothing can beat the silver screen, but unfortunately most people love to stay in their comfort zones when going to the cinema. They just want to be entertained. And to be honest, most You Tube films would collapse if to be screened on a big screen – the quality just isn’t good enough. The majority of people that watch TV or go to a cinema plan to be passive. Entertaining films or programs enables them to use minimal brain capacity: they relax. Not the best mood to watch a painful documentary about Chinese workers.

Activeness contributes to the understanding of documentaries. The Internet is an active medium. We search, we click, we copy-paste, we collect, we participate, we watch, read, and create content. There’s no such thing as sitting back and let the Internet do the rest. Such an active place is a perfect broadcasting system for documentaries, or documentary-clips. Documentaries therefore can lengthen their life cycle by using the Internet as a powerful distribution tool. Although some docs make it on their own through straight-to-Internet distribution, the majority still needs another platform to create a buzz first. A festival, market, theatrical distribution or a TV-broadcast can create the buzz, and in my opinion the Internet is a great platform to spread the buzz as fast as possible. I have seen China Blue at the IDFA 2 years ago, but it has recently been broadcast by Dutch cultural TV station VPRO. The day after I found my friends discussing the film, and two days later even more friends had been viewing the film online. These friends never go to festivals and they would not buy a cinema ticket for a documentary, but they got involved because the Free TV broadcast plus the opportunity to view the doc online. Therefore, a documentary filmmaker or agent might consider to sell the Free TV rights to a TV station that also broadcasts on the Internet. Although the content will eventually be diffused over the Internet once it has been broadcasted once, and it might be hard to track down the moves of the doc, still the amount of viewers will increase enormously. I’m always amazed about the amount of audiovisual gems on the web. For example http://best.online.docus.googlepages.com, which contains a large amount of quality documentaries, including The Yes Men.

What about user-generated content sites like You Tube and My Space? Many (documentary) filmmakers put clips of their films on You Tube to create awareness and curiosity. You Tube clips can easily be picked up by bloggers, and since blogs got the power in this Web 2.0 world, the buzz will keep on going… hopefully the clips will eventually make it into You Tube’s holy lists like the ‘most viewed’, ‘most discussed’ or ‘top rated list’. Although many serious filmmakers still consider You Tube and other user-generated content sites childish trash, this 2 year-old phenomenon will eventually mature and offer great opportunities to these filmmakers. Today it’s still difficult to search for audiovisual gems without further clues. The viewer has to swim through an ocean of, indeed, childish trash just to see if there’s anything good out there. I’m sure the search functions will improve in time, but today we still depend on bloggers and journalists.

Recently a Chinese documentary on You Tube has created a huge blog-buzz. I read about Though I am gone by Hu Jie in Volkskrant, a Dutch daily (April 16th, 2007), but the story about this controversial film had already been published on many blogs. One of them, named Letters of China (see Blog Letters From China) states: “Just before the Yunnan Film Festival (a documentary festival in China), the Organising Committee suddenly issued a notice on 26 March saying the film festival was ordered to suspend and the committee was still communicating with the relevant departments. Sources say the suspension is the result of the nomination of documentary Though I am Gone”. I was wondering how controversial this film could be, as the film resulted in the banning (or, as the Organising Committee states, “delay”) of a whole festival. Fortunately, the film has been cut into 10 pieces and is to be seen at You Tube (see Though I am gone). Unfortunately you can’t see it when you are currently on the Chinese mainland, as the film is banned from China.

This intriguing documentary is about the awful death of Bian Zhongyun, one of the first victims of China's Cultural Revolution. During Mao’s terror campaign, scholars and students were mobilized to fight against anyone who could injure Mao’s position. Since the Cultural Revolution ‘celebrated’ its 40th birthday in 2006, independent filmmaker Hu Jie decided to make a documentary about the horrors that happened in 1966. Though I am Gone is therefore a monument to honor the memory of many anonymous victims.

Hu was able to make such an intriguing portrait because he had access to unique material. Wang Yingyao, schoolteacher Bian Zhongyun’s husband, bought a camera the day after his wife was murdered. He immediately started documenting the circumstances surrounding the death of his wife, all with painful precision. The pictures are simple black-and-white images that show the downfall of a family that is loyal to the Communist Party. The photos are adding an intense dramatic force to the documentary. There’s a handout, attached to the wall in Wang’s house, that says: “You better point your pig’s ears and listen carefully. We shall cut you into pieces if you keep resisting us.”. Signed by Class 3, Middle Girls School. Bian Zhongyun’s students. After weeks of bullying, she was beaten to death by the girls of her school, fanatical Red Guard girls.

Wang has collected the evidence with regard to his wife’s murder and kept it all his life in the certainty that one day it would do its legal work. He shamelessly shows the objects to the camera. Among the evidence is his wife bloodstained and dirty underpants. It’s like Crime Scene Investigation, China.

The girls who beat their teacher to death are 50 year old women now. Few have talked about the insanity that once came over them. The majority continues to remain in denial. Since this school was an elite school, their parents belonged to the top ranks of the party and they themselves are apparently still supporting the system. A telephone call from one of these women was powerful enough to ban the film and the whole festival around it….

So thank god for You Tube and all other online applications to view films that have been banned or suffer from censorship. The new opportunities for audiovisual content do not only offer great platforms to increase the amount of viewers, but they can add up to social awareness as well. The ownership rights problems have still to be sorted out, but apart from that I think I can perfectly live in this Web 2.0 world, where docs and films are having a revival.