Everything is a remix: the Matrix

Everything Is A Remix: THE MATRIX from robgwilson.com on Vimeo.

Que Neo siga al conejo blanco; o que sea el elegido; que descubra que está viviendo en la caverna de Platón; o que las máquinas terminen dominando al hombre en el desierto de lo real; todas estas han sido razones para ligar The Matrix con referencias culturales conocidas por todos como Alicia en el país de las maravillas, la Biblia, la filosofía platónica o la inteligencia artificial. Razones para entender la cinta de los hermanos Wachowski como un palimpsesto cultural.

A pesar de no proponer nada nuevo (ni siquiera el efecto «bullet time» era la primera vez que se utilizaba y sus autores reconocieron la fuerte influencia que para ellos había tenido Ghost in the Shell), The Matrix se convirtió a finales de la década de los noventa en toda una referencia para la cultura audiovisual.

Ahora Rob Wilson, como ya hizo con Kill Bill (Quentin Tarantino), explora el código fuente audiovisual de The Matrix para descubrir por qué es una referencia de referencias: everything is a remix.

We are More

We are More – act for culture in Europe is a Europe-wide campaign for the arts and culture. It was launched in October 2010 and will run until 2013, when the EU decides about its next multiannual budget.

The we are more campaign promotes culture, heritage and the arts, together with education, social cohesion and environmental sustainability, as key areas in which the EU has to make more bold investments if it wants to reach its growth objectives and Europe to remain a thriving democracy in the future.

The force behind the we are more campaign is Culture Action Europe, a coalition of more than 100 organisations and many artists across Europe, in strategic partnership with the European Cultural Foundation. It is an open source advocacy tool that encourages arts and cultural organisations across Europe to get involved and stand up for increased support to arts and culture in the policies and programmes of the European Union.

The campaign has two demands; firstly, a reinforced Culture Programme that is more daring and experimental than the current one. Secondly, an increased and more explicit support to culture, heritage and the arts in the EU Regional Development Funds dedicated to cohesion and local and regional development. More information about the campaign demands can be found here.

Poland.doc Inspirations available in English

Inspirations is a series of articles, interviews and videos written with young creators and culture animateurs in mind.

The series opens with a documentary series How to make a film, created by Polish documentary maker Piotr Stasik for the public television channel Kultura. Texts range from general reflections on being creative (To be creative by cultural animateur at the Center for Contemporary Art in Warsaw, Maria Parczewska) to practical advice (Photography in work with children by Association “ę”’s own Agnieszka Pajączkowska).

With something to liven up the minds of every one interested in film, photography or more broadly creative work, Inspirations invite the reader to challenge themselves – to be inspired.

Full list of articles and videos is available at the Poland.doc website.

All episodes of How to make a film also available on the Association “ę” Vimeo channel.

DNN screening at Seville European Film Fest

Esta tarde a las 19h en el I+CAS proyectamos una selección de vídeos pertenecientes a la media collection de la red Doc Next.

Los vídeos que se proyectarán en el Seville European Film Fest son los siguientes:

A Way by Sergey Kirasyan (Armenia)
Biżuteria Publiczna by Iwo Kondefer (Poland)
Bracia by Emi Mazurkiewicz (Poland)
Ece’esque by Bahar Demirkan, Okyar Igli, Hayati Kose and Morteza Moghaddam (Turkey)
Grown up at age of 11in Macedonia by Vladimir Tevcev (Macedonia)
Guilty until Proven Innocent by Danyal Laskar (UK)
Launderette by Bertie Telezynski and Alex Nevill (UK)
Lost in Translation by Akile Nazli Kaya (Turkey)
Sex Sense by José Manuel Borrego, José Manuel Expósito, Pedro Fernández, Rosario Fernández, Noelia Fernández, Belén Márquez, José Antonio Márquez, Iván Ruiz Vergara and Pablo Domínguez (Spain)
The last communist in Berlin by Robin Meurer (Germany)
TRON by Felipe G. Gil (Spain)
Zero Point by Gjorgje Jovanovic (Macedonia)

IDFA, here we come!

Nazli (left) and Selin (right)

Two young DIY media-makers from Turkey, Akile Nazli Kaya (31) and Selin Gunduz (21), are ready to participate IDFA 2011 next week as part of the Doc Next filmmakers group that will take part in the IDFAcademy and all related events. Nazli’s film “Ebb and Tide” is among the ten short Doc Next documentaries that will be screened at IDFA 2011 prior to the feature length films. Two other films from Turkey, “Ece’esque” (dir. Ozge Yesilcimen, Bora Balbey, Bade Selcuk, Caner Kececi) and “Dear Brother Sakir” (dir. Bahar Demirkan, Okyar Igli, Hayati Kose and Morteza Moghaddam), which were made during Youth MODE Workshops, will be screened at IDFA’s Doc Next Mini Cinema section featuring continual screenings of a selection from the Doc Next Media Collection.

Nazli is an awarded animator/director/designer working and studying in Prague. Nazli’s productions focus on important themes such as immigration, food security and personal freedom. Her biggest ambition in life is to make creative, innovative and inspiring short animated films and documentaries that address social and environmental issues. Her dream is to open an animation studio in Prague and Istanbul that will create socially and environmentally concerned ‘green’ films.” Her film in IDFA 2011 program “Ebb and Tide” is about a young woman reading from her diaries about her life in the Czech Republic while showing the life of her parents, who also temporarily immigrated to another country. As an interpretation of home videos made on S8, the film’s emotionally charged story challenges the existing imagery of Turkish people living in Europe. Nazli’s awarded animation documenaries “Zlin Soup” and “Nazli in Zlin” are also in the Doc Next Media Collection. She is currently working on a new ‘green’ film “The Seed”.

Selin is an aspiring DIY filmmaker with tremendous self-motivation. She did not attend university nor did she receive formal media education, but she pushes herself to learn more about filmmaking, screenwriting, photography and acting by attending certificate programs, workshops and seminars. Selin participated the Youth MODE Documentary Workshop in Canakkale last year and made the film “Sounds and Shadows“, also included in the Doc Next Media Collection,
with fellow workshop participants Erkan Atay, Ahmet Turan and Alper Dutkin. “To me, filmmaking is not a temporary interest. It has captured me completely. I want to build my life on it, I am saving money by working other jobs in order to make films and also to attend screenings and other film related events,” says Selin, who now works on the script for her new short film and is preparing a documentary on internet censorship in Turkey.

We wish both ladies the best of time at IDFAcademy and we are also very excited to be joining them in Amsterdam next week!

Click here to read more about the IDFAcademy participants and program.

“El sexo sentido” (Sex Sense) is a short documentary about youth, sex, love and fears. This video belongs to Doc Next Network media collection and has been made during the audiovisual workshop ZEMOS98 produced at El Viso del Alcor (Seville, Spain), in the IES Profesor Juan Bautista (June 2011).

We’d like to congratulate the media makers José Manuel Borrego, José Manuel Expósito, Pedro Fernández, Rosario Fernández, Noelia Fernández, Belén Márquez, José Antonio Márquez, Iván Ruiz Vergara, together with the coordination of Pablo Domínguez and Rubén Díaz (both members of ZEMOS98) because of the VISIBILIDART 2011 prize, given by COLEGADES (a LGBT association located in Cádiz, Spain).

The VISIBILIDART prize awards those cultural initiatives that make efforts to eradicate homophobia and to promote democratic values.

“El sexo sentido” has aroused great interest as it was broadcasted in the Spanish National TV (TVE) programme “Cámara Abierta 2.0”:

Recordar.TV, listening to our elders

Within DNN media collection, there are 5 categories or themes. One of these categories is the present past, described as «how the past affects the stories and experiences of different generations».
Well, here we have a project that absolutely deal with this topic: Recordar TV (Remember TV).

Recordar TV (Remember TV) is an internet television built up from the perspective of the elderly. It aims to encourage digital literacy among this collective, promote their stories, which do not often take part on the net, and also help with the local issues that could be of public interest on the internet. This is an internet television project, therefore we will not only publish videos, we will take advantage as well of the multimedia languages that are possible on the web.

You can find an English version of the project’s dossier here

The elderly of our society have many things to tell us and Recordar TV has a vocation for listening to them. We would like to encourage those stories which are not usually present on the web and look after local worries subject to public interest and also being creative at the same time. And we would like to do it through an internet television. But not just any television on the internet, but one which is made from the perspective of the elderly. For and by them. And, in that way, help out with the digital literacy of this wide social group, which is highly relevant nowadays in the current paradigm in which life expectancy keeps increasing.

The lack of communication of a society with their elders usually is not an issue of age difference, neither it is due to diverse generations not understanding one another. Sometimes it happens that the tools we use to do it are just different. Because growing older not necessarily means stop being young. That is the reason why we want to share the tools that exist nowadays with people that did not have, for whatever reason, the chance to get to know or handle them with ease to make them part of their everyday life.

We are going to explore the lands where languages get mixed up, where prejudices vanish away, where lives cross one another. We are going to play again.

Because it is never too late to learn. And it does not matter how much you know, but how willing you are to keep learning.

A new workshop on audiovisual remix by ZEMOS98

ZEMOS98, thanks to the support of ECF, is this year a sponsor institution of Seville European Film Festival (4th to 11th November). Our team is running an audiovisual remix workshop between 8th and 11th November on the following topic: the fascinated society, (un)reading, (re)reading and (re)making media images.

Audiovisual remix is so present that it runs the risk of becom- ing a fashion empty of content left in the hands of a society fascinated by the moving image. What is hidden behind the discourse of consumption?

You can find all the info about the workshop in Spanish here. And you can check a video about the last workshop on remix we did at the Centre of Contemporary Arts in Seville:

Workshop on Remix – ZEMOS98

IDFA 2011!!!

Mawaan Rizwan (Left) and Alex Nevill (right)

Good afternoon (morning or good night depending on when you read this)! For once this blog post has one subject, and one subject only; IDFA 2011!

We’re jetting two talented young filmmakers, Mawaan Rizwan and Alex Nevill off to take part in the IDFA academy, where they’ll get the chance to take part in workshops and discussions about film and in particular documentary!

Mawaan is a presenter for T4′s Battlefront, a campaigns TV show that provides young people with a platform to run a campaign about issues they feel strongly about. We chose Mawaan for several reasons, primarily because we find his online videos HILARIOUS. His work with Battlefront shows how committed he is to making a difference to the world around him and as a filmmaker he’s picked up several awards, including the Film London Best of Borough Audience Award for his film Jimmy Will Play, which is also being screened at our very own London Film Festival! Definitely a good choice we felt.

Our second participant is Alex Nevill. Alex has worked on quite a few short films and 3 feature films, both privately and professionally. We first came across Alex when he submitted his film King Cone to our very own BFI Future Film Festival in 2010, where it won the Best Documentary award. His CV is peppered with festival screenings and film awards, and his latest documentary ‘Launderette’ may even be screened at IDFA 2011! His cinematography is inspired, and he’s really impressed us with his last few films have blown us away, so we felt he would be the perfect candidate for the IDFA academy.

That’s pretty much it for this update, aside from saying we’re incredibly excited to be heading to Amsterdam in under a month, and we hope to see you there! Check out more information about the IDFA 2011 Participants and the Full IDFA 2011 programme!

Various updates and events!

Good afternoon!

We’ve (once again) got a lot going on at BFI Future Film at the moment, so I’m here to give a little update to all of you wonderful readers.

First and foremost, our Step2TV bursary winners have started filming, and we’re looking forwards to seeing the work they produce. Hopefully it’ll be as good as some of the previous work the bursary scheme’s have produced. On the note of bursary schemes, keep an eye on that link, as we’ll soon be uploading our first documentary bursary films, including the hilariously brilliant Baroque’n’Roll.

Submissions are nearly closed for our 5th Future Film Festival, so if you’ve got a film to submit, get a wiggle on! Entries will not be accepted after the 31st October! The programme is slowly being assembled for the festival itself on the 11th & 12th February 2012, so put some crosses next to the dates in your diary – you won’t want to be anywhere else!

What else is new in Future Film land? We’ve got the We The Peoples Film Festival – Young Filmmakers for Development Day coming up on the 19th November (I know, I know, it’s at the same time as IDFA, but if you can’t afford the flights to Amsterdam, swing by the BFI instead!) The programme for that is looking impressive, with two new feature films and many youth-made shorts being screened. We checked out one of the features at this year’s London Film Festival and it was brilliant, beautiful and heartwarming, so if you can do, definitely come along!

Don’t forget we’re also currently running a Twitter competition, in which 12 lucky finalists get a chance to pitch to a panel of experts at Encounters’ Fresh Flix festival in November. The final winner, chosen by the panellists, will then get an all-expenses paid trip to a workshop with one of our partner Hubs in Europe! Exciting! Check out more information here.

‘Is that everything?’ I hear you ask, and I reply ‘NO!’ We’ve got more.

There’s two girls doing work experience with us at the moment, and they’ve been watching LFF Press Screenings and writing reviews on them, which we’ve in turn been posting online to our Future Film Facebook page! So head on over there to check them out. They’ve seen some fantastic films, from Coriolanus to Friend Request Pending.

Our Four Lions screening with the Chris Morris Q&A was fantastic, thank you for asking, and highlights will soon be posted on our Facebook. We’ve also got big things in the pipeline with IdeasTap, so keep an eye out, and we’ll update you as we’re allowed.

We’re also heading to the 2011 London Screenwriters Festival this weekend which we’re all rather excited about! The programme looks jam-packed with good stuff so we’ll be updating you with what we learnt over the weekend in a couple of weeks.

That’s pretty much all for now, so I’d like to say So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersen, Goodnight. Adieu, Adiue, to you and you and you.