After Snowden film, Laura Poitras starts documentary streaming service
Filmmaker and her partners seek a 'Life Magazine for the internet age' in Field of Vision, which will commission short-form documentaries and stream them free of charge
Most directors who win an Oscar follow a well-trodden path: they entertain new offers from producers and financiers or they look to jumpstart their own long-gestating film project.
Laura Poitras, who filmed Edward Snowden in a Hong Kong hotel room when he made his explosive revelations of government spying on citizens, and who won an Oscar for directing the subsequent film about the affair, Citizenfour, has gone in a rather different direction. After she took the documentary prize in February for her examination of Snowden and US government surveillance, she decided to try something few filmmakers undertake: become an entrepreneur.
Poitras and the documentary-world veterans Charlotte Cook and A. J. Schnack have created Field of Vision, a company that will commission short-form documentaries and make them available for free streaming on its website.
This week, when the first block of movies premiered at the New York Film Festival, Field of Vision announced itself as a bold if by no means certain venture: a platform for new documentary work that stands apart from venues such as PBS, HBO and Netflix.
“I love long-form documentaries, so I don’t think the form needs to be reinvented,” Poitras said last week in her production company office overlooking New York’s Hudson River. “But there’s a shift in how we consume media and stories. I don’t think creative people should be bound by one format.”