Does It Have Impact?

“It’s about an international community of filmmakers who are working on socially conscious themes…”
— JoAnne Fishburn

Jackie Garrow: “There are many sub-rules within [impact producing] that I’m now starting to see quite clearly.”

IT’S BEEN SIXTEEN YEARS SINCE the release of The Corporation introduced a wealth of exciting strategies for producing, promoting, and distributing Canadian documentaries that seek not just to enlighten viewers but give them a call to action. And it’s been five years since the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC) published Charting a Course on Impact Producing, an in-depth study of the emerging ways that doc makers are financing work, forging alliances with activist and philanthropic partners, and reaching audiences, all with the goal of fostering change.

Yet one thing that becomes clear when impact production becomes the subject of conversation is how elastic and all-encompassing the term proves to be. It defies any efforts to treat it like a handy one-size-fits-all template. Instead, filmmakers face a wide array of challenges, and often very particular circumstances, when they seek to create and disseminate works they hope will make the world a little bit better.

“It’s definitely a multi-faceted term,” says Jackie Garrow, the former managing director for DOC in Toronto and an impact producer whose company Ring Five developed and led impact initiatives for such recent films as The Shadow of, , and . “There are many sub-rules within that term that I’m now starting to see quite clearly.”