MILOŠ VUKOVIĆ, INTERACTION: DOC WORKSHOP PRODUCER IN CONVERSATION WITH SKYE FITZGERALD

Last week, I had the incredible opportunity to chat to Skye Fitzgerald, a versatile filmmaker and producer.

He is best known for a trilogy of films focused on the global refugee crisis: 50 Feet From Syria was voted onto the Oscar® shortlist, Lifeboat was nominated for an Academy Award® and national Emmy® and Hunger Ward was nominated for an Academy Award®. His latest film, Chasing Roo, was shortlisted for an Oscar®.

Skye Fitzgerald is a member of the Documentary Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and we are very lucky to have him on as a this year’s Doc Workshop expert.

You can read a fragment of our conversation below.

Your documentary work often takes you to the epicenters of today’s humanitarian disasters and conflicts. How do you prepare yourself to enter such a world — and how do you come out of it?

Stress, calm and stability are relative. The long tail of documentary film is carrying the circumstances and experiences of those you collaborate with long after you are no longer in situ with them. Staying in contact and relationship with them over time creates avenues of mutual support – both practical and emotional. I also rely on my three dogs to ground me once home. They don’t care where I’ve been or what I’ve done. They just want me for who I am.

You’re well known for working in the short form. What can a short documentary do that a feature-length one can’t? Where does the power of the short form lie — if it exists?

For me short form is the tension of essence over context…how does one capture the essence of a moment, an experience or event rather than telling the history of it. And so I think of short form as a distillation. A story can be an inch wide and mile deep… and if you can immerse the viewer fully in it, experiential truth will emerge with or without intellectual context.

Considering your role as a tutor in our Doc in Progress programme — when working with authors on projects in development, which elements of the story, approach, or author’s position immediately catch your eye? What do you pay attention to first, and why?

Does the auteur truly believe in the story and is fully committed to see it through to the end, no matter how difficult? In other words – commitment.

Does the filmmaker truly have access from the inside out and without relying overly on 2nd, 3rd or 4th removed sources?

Is there an aesthetic vision that is original or unusual?