Europe is in an economic crisis that, unlike the eurozone downturn at the beginning of the millennium, cannot be measured in ratings downgrades and borrowing costs. For metrics, try engagement depth and consumer trust instead.
The unedifying spectacle of the European Union’s falling out over the Ceuta crisis looks like the latest symptom of Europe’s shrinking attention economy. When more than 70,000 people crossed over from Morocco to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta at the start of the month, Rome hastily reintroduced air and sea border checks with Spain for one month; Madrid retaliated with spot-checks on travellers to Italy.
Politicians were falling over themselves to match the wildfire speed of social media, for this was a geopolitical flashpoint that appears not just to have been engineered but also politically processed via short video clips online. The crossings were reportedly triggered by viral videos suggesting that Spain’s border with Morocco was opening, while their framing as an “assault” or “invasion” was amplified by accounts with links to the Russian military, as Aisha Down reported. Platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and TikTok are built to reward content that instantly hooks in viewers – three seconds long is the golden rule. How can lawmakers ever keep up?
Yet what if, paradoxically, our attention economy is both shrinking and expanding at the same time? I’ve found it hard to shake that impression after perusing the lineup at the forthcoming Venice film festival, opening on 2 September.
This year at the Lido, you can watch a three-hour film about the Italian Communist party sending a camera team to the Soviet Union (Imperium, by Ukrainian auteur Sergei Loznitsa); a four-hour documentary about Elon Musk (Musk, by American director Alex Gibney); or a more than five-hour video diary about Russian dissident journalists in exile (Julia Loktev’s My Undesirable Friends: Part II). Too short for you? Then, get tickets for Luca Guadagnino’s Joie de Vivre, a lengthy analysis of the films of compatriot Bernardo Bertolucci. It clocks in at seven hours.
For the most part, these are surprisingly politically forthright titles at a film festival that in the recent past has focused on glitz and glamour. Loznitsa’s documentary seeks to shatter the remnants of the left’s illusions about the Soviet Union; Loktev gives a voice to the journalists silenced by Putin; Gibney’s Musk film has already been preemptively dismissed by the far-right tycoon as a “hit job”. But are they trying to stretch out attention spans so much that they risk playing only to a gallery of cinephiles?
On the topic of impactful film-making …
Perhaps there is a point between both extremes to capture people’s imaginations and attention. That’s what the Guardian is hoping to prove, in collaboration with Franco-German culture channel Arte. We are inviting film-makers to propose short-form documentaries exploring democracy in Europe today. The winning submission will be presented at the DOK Leipzig film festival at the end of October, and subsequently receive funding, editorial support and distribution through Guardian Documentaries and Arte platforms. The deadline for submissions is 14 September.
Crucially, they should be no longer than 20 minutes – a length that Jess Gormley, the Guardian’s executive producer of documentaries, argues “encourages participation and debate”. She points to recent Guardian documentaries such as Liane Aviram and Louis Hollis’s 23-minute short The Oath, about a Palestinian doctor in Israel’s healthcare system, which led to its protagonist being invited to speak in front of the UK parliament – a film that held, rather than overwhelmed our attention.