MIT Documentary LAb and IDFA Doc Lab joined forces to explore the past and future  of documentary and technology.

New voices, stories and publics are needed now more than ever. The present brings storytellers, technologists, and scholars together to explore new documentary forms.  New programs focus on collaborative, interactive, and immersive storytelling. Documentary film dedicates itself to the critically engagement of the world.

Artists, journalists, technologists, and media makers aim to challenge documentary’s boundaries and innovate into reality-based storytelling.

A new website was created from this new collaboration in order to guide whoever is interested into the future of reality-based storytelling.

More details regarding the Moments of Innovation website, you can find here

Thierry Garrel, former head of the Documentary department at ARTE, France, will be the main expert during the theoretical part of Aristoteles Workshop. Apply by July 20th, here:http://bit.ly/29kJWSB

ARISTOTELES WORKSHOP (AW) is a training and development center dedicated to foster a new generation of creative documentary filmmakers around the world. Established in 2006, with substantial material and spiritual support from the French/German cultural TV channel arte, AW is truly a unique training program, offering both a hands-on approach and a continuous tutoring system.

12 participants will be selected on the basis of a dossier (credentials, demo reels, and recommendations). Participants should express an avid interest in learning and doing television the arte way. The ideal composition of the group is that of young documentary filmmakers, writers, producers, directors, DPs, and editors. During this thorough television workshop, the participants, divided in four groups, will be guided through each and every step of the documentary production.

Established and respected professionals will help the participants translate their own ideas into fresh, ground breaking documentaries.

While the emphasis will mainly be on the content, the workshop will also benefit of the latest High Definition TV technologies and techniques.

AW will provide accomodations, production and post production equipment and facilities. In the end each group will have to deliver a half-hour documentary ready for broadcast and entirely marketable.

Since 2003, academics and students from various university departments in the Balkans have established the BORDER CROSSINGS Network. The Network encourages the development of university cooperation mainly in the areas of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Folklore, Balkan Studies and History. It aims at promoting closer relationships between Universities, academics and students in the region by regularly organizing various forms of academic exchange.

Such cooperation is an important missing element in the process of cross-cultural and cross-border understanding, inter-ethnic tolerance and economic and political prosperity in the region. The BORDER CROSSINGS network’s activities counter fears, mistrust and prejudices. Students come out of these activities with a better understanding of their common heritage and the benefits, and how to use it to the advantage of the region. In addition, they build capacity within the participating Higher Education Institutions and enable further common research activities.

You can find out more and how to take part in Border Crossings here

Play, no matter what! is a film about the importance of being creative and playful because it helps the self-development of children. Playing is a very powerful way of learning because when children play they find what their talents are, and what they like in life. But not only is it a great way to develop your talents, playing together in a safe place helps to build self-esteem and social skills. The children in Play, no matter what! discover not only what they find important in life, they also became more social and self-confident. Also, what is more important about this movie is the fact that it is made about a small Romanian community of children. That underlines the importance of how things must change in the Romanian collective conciousness for us to take action and look inside our children’s group of friends and the way they act as if we are looking at our own future development. Notable to mention it is also the fact that this film concept is very useful as references and intentions: playing and understanding the way children do that offers another perspective on how we should live life. The film tells the story of a way of living, that is the Romanian way of living and that reminds us about the necessity of simple things, joy and happiness that sometimes lack from our every day schedule. This is the reason why understanding its directions means a lot for the educational system and for the impact that a work of art has on the change of perspective regarding a small group of people or environment. So take advantage of this opportunity and download the film and watch it with your students or with the children in your school. This will definitely make a difference when thinking about the continuity of the project and the people involved in it.

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By downloading the documentary you also support the Flying Seagull Project that works with children in Romania and you can make this change possible for other small communities too because the director is clearly stating her objective for this project to continue depicting life in other places, with other people.

The Intercept, launched in 2014 by Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras and Jeremy Scahill, is dedicated to producing fearless, adversarial journalism. We believe journalism should bring transparency and accountability to powerful governmental and corporate institutions, and our journalists have the editorial freedom and legal support to pursue this mission.

The Intercept is a publication of First Look Media. Launched in 2013 by eBay founder and philanthropist Pierre Omidyar, First Look Media is a multi-platform media company devoted to supporting independent voices, from fearless investigative journalism and documentary filmmaking to arts, culture, media and entertainment. First Look Media produces and distributes content in a wide range of forms including feature films, short-form video, podcasts, interactive media and long-form journalism, for its own digital properties and with partners.

All you can enjoy and get inspired: https://theintercept.com/