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Seven documentary makers in turn will sit at a table with these potential benefactors—the seven films having been culled from an original 150 submissions in a process that took months. At this stage each film is finished or nearly so; its creators will have seven minutes to show a trailer and then pitch their project, and for the next 20 minutes or so everyone at the table will weigh in on it and how to help it succeed. As the seats at the table will change for each film, having been allocated to organizations with an established interest in a particular documentary and the subject it’s dealing with, I wondered if Tuesday’s sessions were even necessary.
Absolutely, said Alpert. “First of all, the atmosphere in the room is a unique thing.” Secondly, the individual sessions are just a piece of the whole. In addition, there are the breakfast before, the lunch during, and the reception after, and the workshops over the past weekend that found “all the filmmakers sitting together around the table and acting as each other’s advocates.” In the course of these hours together the magic happens, said Alpert, and he has seen “organizations that come for one purpose hook up for purposes they never expected.”
The planning committee for Good Pitch Chicago is headed by Steve Cohen, an attorney and documentary supporter (and husband of the judge and actress Mary Mikva, whom I wrote about a couple of weeks ago). Alpert, a member of the committee, is executive director of the Kindling Group, a documentary film house.
• The Message: The (R)evolutionary Power of Climate Change by Avi Lewis, which argues that the world faces ecological and economic crises that must be solved together
