23/02/2010

From today, we will be publishing the diary written for four days by our correspondent Myriam Raccah. New ways of making movies are appearing in the European panorama, which involve audience participation, the web and other media platforms.

Berlin 15/02/2010 – Our Berlinale Talent Campus (EFEA) has begun with The indie filmmakers' guide to cross media I, the first in a series of discussions on alternate ways of creating, producing and distributing films within the new media.

Today they spoke of how a narrator’s possibilities have been revolutionised by mass media distribution and the increasingly more active role of users, no longer traditional spectators but true co-creators of the cultural products consumed.

Three guests spoke about their projects. Lance Weiler discussed his upcoming film Him (Arte France Cinema Award at Rotterdam’s Cinemart), a seemingly run-of-the-mill sci-fi/horror film that, however, besides being traditionally released in cinemas, will be “created organically” through overlapping narrative worlds on several media platforms (a series of downloadable episodes, a game, "micro-narrations" for cell phones, a way for users to intervene directly in the story and so forth).

Alexandre Brachet’s new project Prison Valley (scheduled for a 2010 release) is a "webdocumentary" on the prison business in Colorado, which blends filmic vision and interactive interfaces in a new viewing experience. On the film’s website, after an introductory trailer of several minutes, users are asked to register. Then they are catapulted into a virtual reconstruction of the places shown in the documentary where, using a mouse and other medial tools, they can access sequences from the film, listen to its soundtrack and look at photographs. As well as discuss live or almost live with the film’s subjects or watch other films on the its themes.

Last, but not least, is the 2008 Emmy award-winning co-production between Swedish broadcaster SVT and The Company P, The Truth About Marika. Martin Ericsson spoke to us about the brilliant "media conspiracy" that shook all of Sweden. In conjunction with a TV show on the disappearance of a girl with ties to a mysterious cult, the filmmakers "penetrated" the doubt that it was a true story. Through weekly TV debates, blogs, appeals, symbols in public spaces and so forth, the craze over the search for the girl spread throughout the entire country, leading audiences to interact with the media content and simultaneously transform it into – joke of all jokes - a kind of cult.