Interview: Agnes Varnum

Agnes Varnum is a well-known blogger in the doc­u­mentary film­making com­munity, and she wears many hats at once. In addi­tion to working in pub­li­city for First Run/Icarus Films, she also does doc­u­mentary pro­gram­ming for sev­eral film fest­ivals and writes a reg­ular column for Indiewire. I caught up with the multi-talented Ms. Varnum at this year’s Hot Docs.

James McNally: Tell me about how and why you decided to start your blog.

Agnes Varnum: After SXSW last year, it became clear to me how emer­ging web tech­no­lo­gies, in short­hand, Web 2.0, was bringing people together. Not so much in the film world but def­in­itely in the inter­active com­munity. I wanted to see if it would work in my world — could I raise my own pro­file? Find or create com­munity? Practice my writing skills. It’s been much more suc­cessful and enriching than I had imagined.

JM: In light of the fact that the US is embroiled in a war, and that the level of polit­ical dis­course in the country seems to be at an all-time low, what are some of the themes you’re finding in the doc­u­ment­aries you’re watching? Do you think doc­u­ment­arians have a respons­b­ility to try to engage people in polit­ical reflec­tion? And if so, do you see any pos­itive result of any par­tic­ular films?

AV: This seems to be the age-old ques­tion of “Do docs make a dif­fer­ence?”, and I won’t pre­sume to have an answer beyond my own exper­i­ence. The films I watch, I think, inform me, sens­itize me, move me emo­tion­ally, make me think and engage others. I’m sure that I’m a better cit­izen and person than if I never got into this line of work, but no one is meas­uring how much I’ve changed as a result of the films I’ve watched. One of the things that keeps me in this busi­ness is being around like-minded people, and being present when viewer’s minds are opened. All we can do is keep on our paths and hope that the num­bers of people willing to change their own lives for the bet­ter­ment of others will keep growing.

The cur­rent state of US for­eign policy seems to be a pre­valent theme, and is being addressed in a number of “soldier’s exper­i­ence” films — Operation Homecoming, The War Tapes, and there are sev­eral in the Tribeca programme.

JM: You do mar­keting and pub­li­city for First Run/Icarus Films as well as write columns for a few out­lets and pro­gram for film fest­ivals. Can you tell us a little bit about some of the work you’re involved with right now? Anything inter­esting coming up that you’d like to talk about?

AV: Well, you’ve nailed my bio in a nut­shell. I also do some nar­rative fea­ture devel­op­ment. One pro­ject that I worked on may go into pro­duc­tion this year, so I’m crossing my fin­gers, but I can’t say much more than that about it.

JM: How do you feel the internet and blogs in par­tic­ular have helped inde­pendent and doc­u­mentary filmmakers?

AV: For the people who take advantage of the pos­sib­il­ities, still very few in number, I think it can open up whole new doors to get­ting your work seen and bought. 51 Birch Street is a great example — Doug [Block] did well on the fest cir­cuit but he par­layed that and his online efforts into a very suc­cessful the­at­rical run for his film. Lance Weiler (Head Trauma) is also a master in self-distribution. He did all his own book­ings, but it was his ability to mobilize people out to the theatres that made it work. Four-Eyed Monsters is an early example of this as well.

Blogs are a filter. Those of us doing it write about what we see, enjoy, hate, and our readers may make choices depending on that. I do think that blogs tend to be a niche filter — why read my review if you can read [New York Times film critic] Manohla Dargis? I try to not waste my time on material that is covered else­where, but I see the trend that as a blog becomes more pop­ular, they also tend to go more main­stream. It’s still evolving.

JM: What per­centage of your time does your blog take up and does it match the per­centage of your income you derive from it?

AV: I put in much more time than I get paid for dir­ectly. I have not been suc­cessful in mon­et­izing my blog, but that is a choice. If you want to make money blog­ging, don’t write about niche topics. The people raking in the cash are writing about blog­ging and tech­no­logy (take a look at Technorati’s Top 100). But, the work has other dividends for me that are more important.

JM: After Hot Docs, of course, what do you con­sider the best doc­u­mentary film fest­ivals in the world?

AV: This ques­tion comes up a lot and “best” is totally sub­jective. It always depends on what you need from it and whether the fest meets your needs, and I have not been to all the fest­ivals. But, of the fests I’ve been to, IDFA is an amazing exper­i­ence; SILVERDOCS, Hot Docs and SXSW (not only docs, but truly inspiring on so many levels) are right up there.

JM: Are there any undis­covered gems at this fest­ival that you’d like to let our readers know about?

AV: Can’t answer this until I’ve dis­covered them! I’m really looking for­ward to seeing My Second Life though!

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