A couple of weeks ago I was in Rome for MIA, the Mercato Internazionale Audiovisivi - the Italian content market combining movies, drama series and documentaries. I produced and moderated a panel about history programmes.
I wanted to do the panel is because of how vital it is to bring stories from the past for audiences to recognise and learn from. The panel happened on a date which will go down in history, October 7th, the anniversary of an event which has caused so much death and destruction,am first on that day in Israel and then for the past two years in Palestine. As many countries try to rewrite the historical record and use history as propaganda, getting the facts to people through television is more important than ever.
But informative and factual documentaries are under threat around the world. To pick one country, the USA, whose democracy is under sustained attack from its government, I was dismayed to learn recently that PBS' American Experience strand announced it would be making no new history films, because of the US government campaign against public service broadcasting, just as its 37th season airs. It's far from the only authoritarian state trying to control independent and public media, and it matters to all of us. As writer Mark Twain said, history doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
On the panel were (in order of their distance from Rome...) Proinsias ni Ghrainne (TG4), Mikael Osterby (SVT), Sergiy Nedzelskyy (Suspilne), Elisabeth Hagstedt (Histoire), Caroline Haidacher (ORF) and Laurent Filliung (ARTE). Caroline and Laurent talked about their coproduction made by Nordic Eye, coming out soon -Alfred Nobel and Bertha von Suttner - the Price of Peace. A handsome looking film from the trailer they showed, which told of how the Swedish inventor of dynamite eventually came to found the Nobel Peace Prize, because of his relationship with Austrian peace activist von Suttner.
A discussion on the panel between Mikael and Sergiy may have given rise to a new coproduction about the founding of Ukraine. I never knew the Vikings had something to do with it, and as Putin is misusing the historical record to justify his claim to Ukraine, it's an important subject for historians to bring back into the light.
There was useful takeaway for the producers watching. Michael underlined that SVT was streaming first, mostly streaming-only. History is the one that works best on SVT-Play - the Science audience has gone to Youtube, and Wildlife is mostly linear. Elisabeth from Histoire talked about the new ways they had of recounting history, as in an upcoming series with French YouTuber Nota Bene (Benjamin Brillaud). Proinsias from TG4 said how important it was for history to tap into the moment, as in this recent film Iarsmai dealing with the return of colonial artefacts.
There was also, naturally, some discussion of AI in programme-making. Elisabeth & Mikael are coproducing a film about King Knut (Canute for the Brits), using gen-AI scenes. Good for accuracy said Mikael, as historians can interrogate and check the scenes at a distance in a way they'd never be able to do if it were actors in costumes on a set. Sergiy said that the broadcaster he works for, the Ukrainian public channel Suspilne, wouldn't do AI in docs - so important that the audience can trust us in a world of misinformation and propaganda
Thanks to Davide Abbatescianni for this article about the panel, published in #businessdoceurope - a doc industry newsletter which I can really recommend.
Even though public broadcasting is under pressure and history programmes outside the audience-friendly subjects (like Rome, Pyramids, Titanic, WW2) are hard to get financing for, there are still ones finding viewers. A history doc I've been looking forward to watching since Stephane Milliere told me about it in Sunnyside was Gedeon Programmes' Mary Stuart - the Enigma of the Coded Letters which I watched on Arte.tv
Augustin Viatte's film was beautifully shot, and with the kind of history storytelling I love, putting the past in the present. The contemporary story was of three amateur cryptographers - in Tokyo, Berlin and Tel Aviv - decoding centuries-old letters from Mary Stuart, Mary Queen of Scots. I loved watching these three men describe how they gradually pieced together the story and cracked the code. A historian at the end said that's how history is made - by piecing together facts and proof, gradually, over time.
If you're outside France or Germany, you can see it on Arte.tv in Spanish, Italian, Polish and English. And there was a 60 minute version shown on BBC2, coproduced by Lion Scotland.
October 7th was also the 40th anniversary of the hijacking of the Italian cruise ship Achille Lauro - and the broadcast on Sky in Italy of a film made by Raffaele Brunetti's B&B Film with WDR, following its Arte broadcast the week before. Achille Lauro - Il Crociere del Terrore had the involvment of hijackers, hostages, crew and police.
I wish I'd had time on the panel to talk about other ways of telling history stories, like The Rest is History podcast - the world's most popular history podcast and Dan Snow's brilliant History Hit SVOD. And the popular shows of historians like Bettany Hughes - you can listen to a good recent interview with her on BBC's The Media Show (from 32:45)
So much more to cover, and so many good and thoughtful speakers out there who want to share their knowledge. I'm looking to tell some history stories myself, as well as do more in the conference space, so feel free to reach out to talk more.
Thanks to MIA, Marco Spagnoli, Ben Pace, APA, Gioia Avantaggiato, Gaia Tridente, Maria Bertolini for getting me to Rome and making me feel so welcome.
Let's keep making and showing history, and learning from the past. The truth is out there!
