Focusing on recently-produced, emblematic documentary films, Visions du Réel and DOCM, in partnership with FOCAL, plan to explore the new forms of documentary on the web, in the company of film-makers, producers and distributors.
The DocWeb seminar will be an opportunity to discuss the following issues:
What are the specific characteristics and the different modes of documentary creation on the Internet? What challenges does it raise for writing documentaries? In what way is it renewing the traditional production models? Can it open up alternative dissemination channels?
With Lech Kowalski, director and Thierry Lounas producer of Camera War, Alexandre Brachet, in charge of the site upian.com and web producer of Gaza/Sderot, Joël Ronez, director of arte-tv, Arnaud Dressen, producer and Samuel Bollendorff, director of the web documentary Voyage au bout du charbon, Bruno Nahon, producer of Twenty Show Le film
Films and projects explored during the seminar:
Camera War, Lech Kowalski, Séances Spéciales
Sunday April 25, 4.00pm, Salle de la Colombière
and www.camerawar.tv
Dear Oprah, Kasper Verkaik, Investigations
Friday April 24, 9.00am, Salle de la Colombière
Gaza/Sderot, la vie malgré tout sur gaza-sderot.arte.tv/
Twenty Show Le film de Godefroy Fouray et François Vautier, Compétition Internationale
Friday April 24, 2.00pm, Salle communale
Sunday April 26, 8.00pm, Capitole Fellini
Voyage au bout du charbon, Samuel Bollendorff:
www.lemonde.fr/voyage-charbon
Over the last few years, creation of documentaries has moved into the Internet eldorado, which has become a real laboratory for writing documentaries and their modes of production and distribution. Whereas in the past documentary images were ordinary tools for promotion and educational assistance, or subjects of personal and blown-up publications, the images of documentary films have gradually found there an autonomous medium of their own. Today documentary film forms are seeking their identity in territory that is still largely uncharted. The Internet is becoming not only a free dissemination zone where visions of reality that have been marginalized by the traditional media can be expressed, but is also becoming the focal point of projects that use the technologies specific to the Web: interactive navigation, graphic animations, integration of community networks, multiple entry points, simultaneous screens, instantaneous publication and/or in the form of a serial … Whether they are called interactive documentaries, web documentaries, minimovies or documentary games, each of these variations raises numerous issues.
In economic terms, first of all: while today it is still television channels (BBC, ARTE…) that are supporting documentary creation on-line via their sites, new distribution spaces are being opened up on the web while alternative production and management models are being devised.
Then in artistic terms: by venturing onto the Net, documentary creation is pushing back new borders and exploring new forms - an issue that has always been at the centre of the Festival's concerns. By rendering viewer-internet users active and partially in control of their navigation, by allowing free fragmentation of the narrative and by offering a new way of viewing (via one screen nested in another), web documentaries do indeed raise questions about conventional documentary practices, its reality effects and its political implications, as well as about the viewer's position.
Information and registrations: Carine Bernasconi, market@visionsdureel.ch
