Now available on VOD: SOAP LIFE
Sako Brockmann’s look at the changing landscape of daytime drama has screened at events like the SoHo and Orlando film festivals. FilmBuff has just made the doc available on iTunes, Amazon Instant, CinemaNow, Vudu, XBOX, Google Play, and PlayStation.
Brockmann’s film unabashedly celebrates the much-derided genre of the soap opera, a once popular staple of daytime programming that has all but vanished in recent decades. Taking a survey approach which best suits the project for the small screen, appropriately enough, Brockmann interviews past and present soap stars and other creatives, and, most importantly, their die-hard fans, who still support the beloved programs that they in some cases have watched for decades by attending fan appreciation events. In contrast to this vibrant but small fanbase, however, the genre’s shifting popularity is sketched out in an engaging history lesson that lays out its rise and fall, even as the doc notes the qualities that were able, for a time, to hook audiences until the changes wrought by shifting viewing and working habits, among other factors.
what (not) to doc 