IDFA DocLab

Passing Stanger – The East Village Poetry Walk

admin — Fri, 07 Dec 2012 15:23:05 +0000

It is produced by Pejk Malinovski, with support from The Poetry Foundation. The interactive documentary experience was created in collaboration with Zeega. The audio file and map outlining the route allow the user to take the tour using their own mp3 player. The tour is about 2 miles and 95 minutes long.

The main focus is on poetry and poets from the 1950s to the present. The tour does not provide a linear or concise history, but rather, like a walk, an anecdotal, digressive tapestry of the poetry that lived and continues to live in the neighborhood.

Passing Stranger includes commentary from key figures from the East Village poetry scene, including Ron Padgett, Anne Waldman and Richard Hell, as well as historical audio from poets like Allen Ginsberg, Kenneth Koch and Frank O’Hara. Poet and critic Daniel Kane provides background and context to set the scene.

The Walking Tour ranges from the Bowery in the west to Avenue C in the East, Bleecker Street in the south and 12th street in the north. Stops include St. Mark’s On-the-Bowery, W.H. Auden’s old apartment building, Tompkins Square Park, Allen Ginsberg’s old building, the Bowery poetry club. Each stop contains a montage of poetry, interviews and archival recordings relating to that particular place.

Party: DocLab @ Submarine vs Playgrounds

caspar — Thu, 15 Nov 2012 16:35:11 +0000

IDFA DocLab invites everyone for beer, music and happy encounters with the motion design community at the Submarine vs Playgrounds event held at De Stadsschouwburg Amsterdam on Tuesday 20 November. The event is organised by our friends from the Playgrounds Festival in Tilburg and Submarine Channel, whose Keep on Steppin’ we selected for our competition this year. After 22:00, admission to the event is free. The party runs until 1:00.

During the day program of Submarine vs Playgrounds, IDFA DocLab guest Daniel Burwen will be presenting his interactive graphic novel Operation Ajax. Other speakers include Industrial Light & Magic, Sil van der Woerd & Rutger Hauer, Digital Domain, Henry Hobson, ManvsMachine, PepperMelon, Mikey Please, David Wilson.

See full program .

Live Cinema Event: The Best of NFB Interactive

caspar — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 18:07:12 +0000

Join them for a unique interactive cinema event with live music and three of their finest interactive documentaries performed live onstage: Bear71, Insomnia and Here at Home. With Hugues Sweeney (executive producer of NFB Interactive), Jeremy Mendes (creator of Bear71 and This Land), cellist Heather McIntosh and sound artist and co-creator of Insomnia Philippe Lambert.

Get your tickets here

caspar — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 16:20:21 +0000

To buy tickets for any of the IDFA DocLab 2012 events, please use the online ticket service at IDFA’s main festival website:

Friday 16 November
DocLab Live: The Best of NFB Interactive

Saturday 17 November
DocLab Live: The Shorts Show

Sunday 18 November
IDFA Interactive Documentary Conference

Monday 19 November
DocLab Live: Interactive Home Stories

DocLab & MIT present: Reality vs Future

Tuesday 20 November
DocLab Live: Tales of Violence and Everyday Life

Panel: Introduction to Cross-Media Production

caspar — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:29:12 +0000

During this small-scale seminar, three professionals examine cross-media production. Caspar Sonnen, IDFA DocLab’s coordinator, starts off with a short introduction of the latest trends and developments in digital media. Andrew deVigal discusses a number of multi-medial projects launched by the New York Times, one of which will receive special attention as case study (the for DocLab selected Punched Out ). Georg Tschurtschenthaler, in a second case study, elucidates the production of Culture Files, among a couple of other Gebrueder Beetz’ projects (like Farewell Comrades! and Empire Me).

Moderator: Sean Farnel
12.30-15.00 | Compagnietheater Kleine Zaal

Installation: Alma, a Tale of Violence

admin — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:19:55 +0000

In addition to the iPad documentary selected for the IDFA DocLab Competition, IDFA will also present an installation version of Alma, a Tale of Violence at the Expanding Documentary exhibition in De Brakke Grond. It will showcase the photography by Miquel Dewever-Plana, who has been capturing the violent reality of gang culture in Guatemala for 15 years. The installation will also include drawings by the graphic artist Hugues Micol, expanding on the stories contained inside and outside the photographic images.

Alma, a Tale of Violence was written and directed by Miquel Dewever – Plana and Isabelle Fougère, produced by Arte, Upian and Agence VU’.

Installation: Robots in Residence

admin — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:15:25 +0000

How would a robot approach its documentary subject? What questions would it ask? What problems would it face and what advantages would it have? These are just some of the questions that robot artist Alexander Reben and experimental filmmaker Brent Hoff will try to answer as part of the fifth anniversary of the IDFA DocLab program. For the Robots in Residence Project, Reben designed a series of small documentary robots that will be set free for the duration of the festival. They will roam around the Expanding Documentary exhibition, looking for interesting people and things to document. Feel free to interact with them and answer some of their questions. During DocLab Live: Reality vs Future on Monday, November 19, Reben and Hoff will present the project and premiere a rough cut of its first ever robot-made documentary.

Installation: Moments of Innovation

admin — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:11:35 +0000

Defining documentary has never been easy, and interactive documentaries and other new forms of documentary storytelling compel us to revisit our assumptions now more than ever. Aiming to help put the long story of documentary innovation into perspective, and to speculate about its future, MIT’s new Open Documentary Lab and IDFA DocLab have joined forces and created Moments of Innovation, an interactive installation and online research project. The installation presents seven themes that digital documentary artists are currently exploring, ranging from “Interaction” and “Immersion” to “Location” and “Participation.” Each theme is shown on its own screen, and gives the visitor the opportunity to explore several historical examples of documentary innovation, leading up to more recent highlights from the digital age. The Moments of Innovation project takes an expansive view of documentary and investigates the pas de deux between representation and technology, and the resulting capacity to see the world with new eyes. It’s a first step in connecting some of the dots between the latest digital endeavors and those conceptual pioneers and technological prototypes that came before them.

Exhibition: Expanding Documentary

admin — Tue, 13 Nov 2012 15:09:57 +0000

IDFA DocLab, Paradocs and De Brakke Grond present a cross-medial program showing us the future of documentary storytelling. Exhibitions and live cinema events showcase the inextricable link between documentary and innovation, experiment and adventure.

LIVE EVENTS

IDFA Interactive Documentary Conference
International festival conference on the future of documentary storytelling in the digital age.

DocLab Live Cinema Events
Web docs on the big screen, live music, artist talks, robots and live brain scans – anything’s possible in these five interactive cinema screenings.

Robots in Residence
If robots can build cars and bomb people in foreign countries, why wouldn’t they be able to make documentary films?

Tom Barman’s Late Night Club
Musician and filmmaker Tom Barman hosts this intimate Late Night Club: a journey through the power of documentary with special guests and fascinating footage. Gaining notoriety as the front man for Belgian alternative rock band dEUS, Barman made his directorial debut with Any Way the Wind Blows. This grand master of rock ‘n’ roll takes you to the fringes of life.
Thursday, November 15 and Friday, November 15, 11:00 p.m. to midnight, De Brakke Grond Rode Zaal

Snake Dance:
A live performance on the spiritual connection between man and nature by the British actor Jerry Killick, adapted from a lecture the German art historian and anthropologist Aby Warburg gave in 1923. The reenacted lecture serves as an introduction to the documentary Snake Dance by Manu Riche and Patrick Marnham, which is screening in Paradocs. Based on his studies of the Hopi and Pueblo Indians, Warburg examined how our primary fears have fueled scientific discoveries even as we have become more and more disconnected from nature.
Saturday, November 24, 7:30 p.m., De Brakke Grond Rode Zaal

EXHIBITION

DocLab Competition Showcase
Discover new forms of documentary storytelling through the 15 documentaries selected for the IDFA DocLab Competition for Digital Storytelling.

Alma, a Tale of Violence
This photography exhibition showcases the material used in the eponymous digital documentary on the violence of daily life in gang-ridden Guatamala.

Moments of Innovation
Rediscover the best digital documentaries shown by IDFA DocLab over the past five years in this installation, developed in collaboration with MIT.

Empire
A video installation by the Dutch-American artistic duo Eline Jongsma and Kel O’Neill, examining the remnants of Dutch colonialism in Asia, Africa and South America.

My Name Is Jørgen Leth
An exhibition on the renowned Danish filmmaker, poet and sports pundit Jørgen Leth (b. 1937). In his work, Leth effortlessly switches between art forms and cultures, combining experimental cinema, documentary and performance art. He studied literature and anthropology, and has worked as a jazz, theater and film critic at several leading Danish newspapers. In the 1960s, Leth took part in founding the experimental film group ABCinema. He has made over 40 films, and 2012 marks his 50th anniversary as a prolific author.

Developed by the Danish curator Michael Thouber in collaboration with gallery GL Strand and design agency e-Types, this exhibition showcases the many facets of Leth’s oeuvre in video projections, posters and typographic animations of his poetry. Eight projectors are used simultaneously to reveal the remarkable similarities between his various works. The exhibition presents the first collective examination of his extensive work: from early experiments on heroic cyclists and literary legends to poetic travel films and Leth’s own poetry – expressed both in literary form and as commentary on highlights of the Tour de France. Taken together, they testify to an artist who masters the span between popular and experimental material.

Expanding Documentary is organized in collaboration with De Brakke Grond and made possible by the Mondriaan Foundation and AFK.

Pointer Pointer

admin — Thu, 01 Nov 2012 11:10:17 +0000

Last June, a new online timewaster took its place beside cute kitty pictures and Facebook’s endless stream of messages: Pointer Pointer. In the first four days of its existence, the site was already visited over a milion times. And no wonder: the concept is as simple as it is effective. Place your cursor anywhere on the screen, hold still for a few seconds (the lag in load time was purposefully created), and a picture appears in which someone points exactly at the white arrow on your screen. When you move your mouse a new image is loaded, and once again someone is pointing to the cursor in its new location. The pictures seem to have been downloaded at random: lots of partying students, a few artistic poses, and some truly surprising pointing stances. But the simple concept, created by Amsterdam-based experimental interactive design studio Moniker, is built on an astute observation on the modern-day web: the cursor is disappearing, made obsolete by the touchscreens on our smart phones and tablets. Pointing is passé – these days, it’s all about swiping. Through Pointer Pointer, the Internet is pointing back at us – while it still can.