The world-renown International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam officially kicks off its 10 day program today, permeating itself across theaters around the city . Perhaps less known but more exciting for the ‘new media crowd’ is IDFA DocLab, a unique division and platform dedicated to showcasing innovation in digital documentary storytelling.
Whether termed ‘new media film projects’,…
Originally published on the Video Vortex #6 conference blog
German filmmaker, media artist and activist Florian Schneider ambitiously set out to present a mission statement for a novel type of documentary, the open source mode, and launched into a highly theoretical and somewhat cryptic talk that contained a few guidelines on how this transition can be made, but lacked any clear examples or results.
Doc Lab programmer Caspar Sonnen explains he is focused on “finding ways to reach an audience bigger than just new-media experts… the point is that there are great stories emerging online and we have to show them!” This seems to be the driving force behind the new Idfa’s Doc Lab.