Saturday, June 10th 2017
You have probably heard about this once or two, but we’re in Gießen, a small and lovely German town, to attend the third edition of the IndieSerien Festival: Die Seriale. The first two days brought us a lots of panel, meetings and great talks with local and international authors. So, this is what I learnt during the Educational and the Independent Days.
First of all: no matter how small the town is, how the country is far or how long the flight is, the web series family will always take a chance to meet again. And that’s why I’m not surprised to see so many well-known faces here in Germany. From Sicily to Bilbao, from Rio de Janeiro to Gießen, when it’s time to party like it was 1999, we are in!
But it’s not only about having fun and meeting great people around the world. Creators flights for thousands of miles with one main purpose: get their works to be known, explore what’s new in the digital series world, live the dream to be a filmmaker, maybe. And that’s why it’s so important to have these meetings and have the chance to learn more and more about the producing, the market and the distribution of this kind of format. At the end, as our colleague Joël Bassaget kept saying, it’s all about supporting and promoting the creators around the world.
The Educational Day here at Die Seriale, yesterday, have provided the perfect ground to learn something from the authors themselves and also from great professionals (both German and international). The lectures held by Rose of Dolls (Bilbao Web Fest), Joël Bassaget (Web Series Mag / Web Series World Cup) and Othessa Marie Ghadar (DC Web Fest) have hit the mark very well: a full analysis of the past, present and future of the digital series, why this digital series (r)evolution can be seen as a Nouvelle Vague of our age and what are the forecasts of these audiovisual works. Great lectures, accompanied by a round-table where professors have also anaylized the aestethics and the narrative of these products, a wonderful “theoretical/practical/critical approach” that gives weight and substance to a format that, too many times, is just labeled as “amateur”.
And what a better occasion to discredit these rumors than screening some amazingly well done shows in a real movie theater? A bag of pop-corn, comfortable chairs and the evening is served. And let me tell you that we are definitely going to write about some shows I watched in these two days, because there’re so many interesting projects, such as the first Snapchat series “I am Serafina” or the experimental docu-series “The Blind Data”, which actually blew my mind. Do you want to know more about it? Be patience, there’re still two days here in Gießen!
Today was the Independent Day: no Will Smith or aliens, but a lot of creators who shared their experience about crowdfunding, self-promoting and about directing a series with a unique style and artistic visions. The International Webfests panel is an unmissable event in every festival, and this time there were 6 of them attending: Bilbao Web Fest, DC Web Fest, Sicily Web Fest, Seoul WebFest, Vancouver Web Fest, Webfest Berlin and the Wendie Webfest Hamburg. Each one explained its different way to manage the festival, attract authors and guests and, at the end, promoting the digital series quality works. And they all work, by the way.
Now you have to excuse me, but it’s disco night and I’ve heard some pretty good stuff about the Gießen night-life. Tomorrow it will be Business day: more lectures, meetings and occasions to know better these guys and products. And yeah, of course, that tiny little thing called award ceremony….
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