Doc Society is a not-for-profit organisation that funds and enables independent documentary films. Founded in 2005 (and previously known as BRITDOC) by four women, today we are a team of 24 with offices in London and New York and independent media partners on every continent.
What films have we worked on?
Over the past 12 years, the 270+ feature documentary films we have granted in production or outreach and have executive or co-produced have included Whose Streets, CITIZENFOUR, Virunga, Notes on Blindness, The Possibilities Are Endless, Ping Pong, All These Sleepless Nights, Afghan Star, Hell and Back Again, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer, Who Is Dayani Cristal? The End of the Line, Hooligan Sparrow, Chosen, Chasing Coral, Dirty Wars, Dragonslayer, Give Up Tomorrow, Here’s Johnny, The War Show, One Mile Away, No Fire Zone, Steal This Film, Swandown, The Look of Silence, The Opposition and our first award winner We Are Together.
Who funds our work?
We have been funded since 2011 by the Bertha Foundation, with whom we develop and run many projects including the first documentary journalism fund. The Ford Foundation are currently our biggest overall supporter, as part of their Build programme. We were originally supported at launch by Channel 4 TV but our broadcast partner is now the BBC with who we are co-funding a number of films a year and exploring new audience engagement ideas. We are also lucky enough to work with a myriad of brilliant national and international partners and funders who make our work and the work of our filmmakers possible. They include Creative Europe, Fritt Ord, Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Foundation for Democracy & Media, Threshold Foundation, The Perspective Fund and Wyncote Foundation amongst others. The BFI is our latest partner and the most exciting one possible to begin 2018.
Who works at Doc Society?
Many many brilliant people do, or have worked behind our doors. Thanks and kudo to all of them for building this organisation to the place it is today. Our directors are: Maxyne Franklin, Beadie Finzi, Jess Search, Sandra Whipham and Oliver Rivers. Our whole brilliant team and exceptional board members in the UK and US can be found at www.docsociety.org
What else do we do?
As well as funding films, we always have a number of ambitious projects on the go. The most important ones to mention here are:
Doc Academy – a schools audience development programme run on an online platform delivering curated film clips and specially written lesson plans that help meet UK governmental education targets on literacy, citizenship education, personal and social education for children and young people aged 11–19. Now being used in a quarter of the UK’s secondary schools, we are expanding the programme in 2018. Piloting in schools in the US with our US partner Blueshift Education, and in Kenya with our Nairobi based partner Docubox in collaboration with the British Council.
The Good Pitch - brings together documentary filmmakers with foundations, NGOs, campaigners, philanthropists, policymakers, brands and media around leading social and environmental issues - to forge coalitions and campaigns that are good for all these partners, good for the films and good for society. In its 10th year, Good Pitch is now a global programme that has raised over £25 million for films and their impact campaigns. Events have taken place in India, Taiwan, Argentina, Australia, Indonesia as well as multiple US cities, Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm and London. We have just launched Good Pitch Local, a smaller touring event that is working regionally in the US.
Impact Field Guide – we train individuals wishing to work as impact producers, creating change through film, through short professional training courses and convenings of the community. We recently gathered 100 delegates from 22 countries to our Global Impact Producers Assembly at IDFA in Amsterdam. We also publish an online reference resource that is a practical ‘how to’ guide to the field called the Impact Field Guide which is available in English and Spanish and shortly in Arabic & Portuguese. It has 36,000 users worldwide.
Safe and Secure - we are working with a wide group of independent documentary funders to bring in a new approach to assessing and managing the physical, digital and legal risks that film teams and film subjects take. We have designed a new Safe and Secure Protocol - to help teams flag areas of concern early and a Safe and Secure Handbook to offer guidance based on expert advice and filmmaker experience.
- JoinedNovember 2009
Most popular photos
Testimonials
Nothing to show.