Inspire

Peer Produced Television 2.0: Zomaargasten

This evening around 10 PM local Dutch time the first peer produced television session called Zomaargasten will be aired LIVE on the web. Based on the popular Dutch VPRO TV program called Zomergasten.

I hope you will join this highly interactive session with me and a lot of other Dutch Twitter users. 

International Filmfestival Rotterdam 2007 Highlights Part 4: The Prestige, Marc of Cain, Immer Nie am Meer, Einst Susse Heimat, A Guide To Recognizing Your Saints, Frank Gehry and Between Heaven and Earth

Last Saturday I finished my yearly International Film Festival Rotterdam film marathon with more than 40 screenings within 10 days. It was one of my best years since 1996. My all-time favorite festival year is 1999. In my view, the quality and diversity of this years festival was better relative to the last three years. Compliments to the whole organisation !

Some additional highlights:

• The Prestige
• Sketches of Frank Gehry
• A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
• Marc of Cain
• Immer Nie am Meer/Forever Never Anywhere
• Beyond The Forest/Einst Susse Heimat
• Between Heaven and Earth

My top 5 movies for this years festival are:

1. Das Leben der Anderen
2. The Prestige
3. Cats of Mr. Miritikani
4. A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
5. Sound of Sand

International Filmfestival Rotterdam 2007 Highlights Part 3: Transe, Sound of Sand and Murch

Here are some of my other highlights of this years International Filmfestival Rotterdam:

• Transe
• Sound of Sand
• Murch

If you like symbolic, poetic, original and atmospheric cinema, I would recommend Transe. Awesome, impressionistic shots and the beautiful music make this film one of my favorites. The four elements of nature are in my view represented symbolically as cues of serenity and as reflections of the inner state of the female victim.

Sound of Sand is an original story about the struggles of people living in the desert in Africa. It made me realize how tough life is in these circumstances. This generates a completely different mindset, survival toolkit, value system and time orientation. Perhaps humanity in such hard settings is even more pronounced and clearcut relative to our Western experience of it.

Murch is an inspiring documentary on the tips and tricks of audiovisual editing provided by Walter Murch, editor of The Godfather, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, English Patient and other great movies. If you are interested in video in any form (TV, movies, YouTube/Jumpcut/Bix stuff etc.), this is highly recommended. "Films aren’t finished. They are abandoned." With this statement, the film editor Walter Murch explains clearly that a film is never really completed.

International Filmfestival Rotterdam 2007 Highlights Part 2: Das Leben der Anderen/The Lives of Others

Just saw an amazing movie called Das Leben der Anderen/The Lives of Others. Highly recommended, one of my favorite movies of the last few years and of this years Filmfestival Rotterdam ! Already fully loaded with different nominations (Oscar 2007) and awards (a.o. the European Film Award 2006) I really looked forward to this one and had high expectations. The film exceeded it. It is a story about Stasi surveillance practices in East Germany before The Fall. Great acting, authentic feel, original story, psychological and emotional depth to the characters, touching music, great visuals....it's all there. And one of the most powerful and beautiful endings I have ever seen.

What strikes me is the link of the themes of this film with the current political situation in the Western world due to the dangers of terrorism. See the Patriot Act. In short, Das Leben der Anderen is about personal freedom, choice and empowerment, about freedom of speech and the right of privacy, about openness versus restriction, about love versus fear. And the right of governments to invade our personal space as to prevent terrorism might in worst case escalate towards less constructive scenarios like in this movie. I hope we will never forget the key messages of the important piece of cinema.

Film Festival Rotterdam 2007 Highlights Part 1

Last Wednesday, The International Film Festival Rotterdam 2007 started. I saw 10 movies till now and I found the following ones worth a shot.

- In The Beginning Was The Image: Conversations with Peter Whitehead ; a great documentary on the live of Peter Whitehead, famous filmer in the sixties filming among others The Rolling Stones, Andy Warhol, Alan Ginsberg and many others. What was interesting to me was the story about his father, the falcon and how his life converged while he became interested into pottery integrating different themes of his journey (images, words, signs).

-  The Cats of Mr. Miritikani ; a brilliant documentary on a Japanese-American artist who survives Hiroshima, Japanese camps in the US and 9/11. A balanced, touching and highly original story with enchantment, fun, character and honesty. This must be one of my favorite movies for this festival. Highly recommended !

LeWeb3: An Update

LIVE from Paris from the event Le Web 3 / Les Blogs 3:

Piczo
Yoono 
OpenServing
GapMinder
Venice Project

These links provide some interesting new concepts or blogs.

More 2 come later on...

Enjoy !

PICNIC06 : Best Cross Media Event Yet

Last week I attended the PICNIC06 event in Amsterdam. It was memorable and a huge success on all dimensions (weather, content, people, sold out, follow up next five years, internationalization of the concept). I had a great time due to the great line-up of speakers, a very relaxed atmosphere, good parties and a lot of interesting people to interact with including some speakers and a lot of colleague bloggers. Personally, I found the presentations from Linda Stone (great to talk to you and thanks for your tip on World Changing for some positive and constructive ideas for our planet), Marc Canter, Emile Aarts, Euro Beinat, Reinier Evers and Jo Reid very inspiring and original. I really enjoyed the state of the art content within Track 4 concerning 'the internet of things' or in my terms GeoWeb/Augmented Reality. That really rocked ! Furthermore, it was a new experience for me to be part of a panel discussion on digital media, cross media, marketing and branding with Internet decision makers from KLM, KPN, Lost Boys, Fortis and Leaf. Finally, it was great to see Yme Bosma give his presentation on Eccky and Second Life (and succeed) and to see Bas Verhart, Monique van Dusseldorp and Marleen Stikker as a PICNIC06 team enjoy the fruits of their effort the last few months. Thank you all indeed and we will hopefully meet up again next year in PICNIC07 ! :-) Perhaps with speakers like Howard Rheingold, Paul Saffo, Seth Godin, Yochai Benkler, Dave Sifry, Chris Anderson, Gary Hamel, Michael Moon, Kevin Kelly, Peter Schwartz, Jared Diamond, Joi Ito, Jeremy Wagstaff, Michael Arrington ???

Upcoming: Awesome Cross Media Event

Finally, a key world-class cross media/digital media event will be launched in Amsterdam in September, 2006. Really looking forward to it. Right here you can find the complete program of this amazing upcoming event called PicNic 2006. I will be there. Some highlights in advance:

• Philip Rosedale (Second Life)
• Joseph Joffe
• Esther Dyson
• Joaquin Alvarado
• John Underkoffler
• John de Mol
• Craig Newmark
• Marc Canter
• Stewart Butterfly
• Jamie Kantrowitz
• Reinier Evers
• Eckhart Wintzen
• Dave Winer
• Marleen Stikker
• Yme Bosma

Congrats to the whole organizing committee, especially Bas Verhart and Monique van Dusseldorp.

Very highly recommended for all my readers.

Les Blogs/LesBlogs: highlights from Paris

Just got back from Paris from the event Les Blogs. Very interesting and definitely worth a follow up event next year. Great location and tasty fingerfoods complete the picture. Thanks to the complete organization!

Darren Barefoot gives a nice summary of the event. Dutch readers can read more in Frank-ly and Blogologie. Some photos from the Dutch team (LostBoys, MediaRepublic, me) in Paris can be viewed right here.

Some highlights from my perspective:

• Internet 2.0 is about connecting people (sharing/group behavior/open source/bottom-up). Reminds me of Howard Rheingold's book Smart Mobs on GeoWeb and collective action.
• Increasing gap between generations
• Open APIs will drive the innovation on the Internet the coming years. Expect new services integrating emergent services by using open APIs.
• Rise of blogs with surveys integrated (even corporate blogs)
• Corporate external blogs gain traction and can be used for different purposes (market research, PR, R&D, HRM etc.).
• Flickr comment on video sharing (unlike photo sharing): video is more time-consuming to view and more difficult to scan (although video-indexing/compartimization is already available)
• Rise of Wikis for collaboration within the enterprise
• Rise of RSS relative to e-mail as e-mail is more intrusive.
• Increasing integrating of blogs within mainstream media (MSM). Example: Memeorandum
• Different news+photo aggregation sites like 10x10 to supplement GoogleNews, NewsInEssence and Yahoo News
• Attention.xml. More here
  
• The future of events is in real-time blogging while scanning and participating in the live text chat on the speakers while listening to the speakers themselves.....what do you mean 'hypertasking'? ;-) In different instances, the live text chat from the connected attendees was more inspiring, humorous and informative than the speakers, even though the quality of the speakers generally was already very good indeed (especially Doc Searls, Joi Ito, Yossi Vardi, Euan Semple, Ross Mayfield and Lee Bryant). The live text chat by the attendees functions sometimes like a real time check of the content within the live presentations (real time PlanetFeedback for content ;-)).True interactivity! And sometimes it is just a great laugh (FleshBot Blog) and some outsiders drop by to chat and say hi. Expect the live chat to add real value to the event as a whole (archive function).

Upcoming blogging events in Paris and Amsterdam

2 upcoming blogging (and social software) events which might be of interest to you:

1) Blognomics Event during the TINE 2005 in Amsterdam

2) Les Blogs (Blogging and Social Software) in Paris / Les Blogs Event Info

The latter is a key event with great and leading speakers like Joi Ito, Dave Sifry, Caterina Fake and Doc Searls. Really looking forward to this 1 day conference.

I will be there as well.....hope to meet you over there :-) Drop me an e-mail...

Yuri