creative commons

BccN 2012

7 May 2012

From BccN to ccMAD to BccN again. The original and only Creative Commons Film Festival (now copied and reproduced all over the planet) is back for a new edition in the Catalonian capital this weekend.

The third edition of the Barcelonian festival (this year exported to quite a large number of cities including Buenos Aires, Rome, Helsinki or Santiago de Chile) takes the same principles & manifesto that made it famous back in 2010 and brings them to a new location: the well-known contemporary arts MACBA museum.

Vincent Moon is also back to the festival presenting his new musical documentary “Esperando el Tsunami” (waiting for the….) – a roadmovie starring the Colombian duet “Lulacruza” and visiting the Andean country musical heritage – which he believes to be his best work up to date and that will open the festival this Thursday.

But there will be more!  24 more movies, shorts and documentaries from all around the world showed at the MACBA Auditorium until Sunday evening, so… if around Barna, and nothing else to do… you better not miss it. The full program is this way, and more info on the BccN webpage.

And one more teaser for your pleasure…

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#Bookcamping

20 January 2012

From the ashes of the 15M movement (you know, the Spanish-born Indignados similar to the Wall Street mov in the US) was born one of those initiatives that may or may not survive in the long term… with all those Google Books and e-book marketplaces initiatives, but it’s nice to always have small initiatives like #Bookcamping.

In fact, #bookcamping is a Spanish initiative (for now) aimed at the Spanish-speaking community which hosts a virtual library where you can link and download content in various formats  (text, audio, video). Their objective is to “socialize” reading and promote the sharealike (aka Creative Commons) culture.

You can find books on politics, counterculture movements, poetry, visual & graphic arts, science… and a large number of bizarrities that go from “Sonic Death” (the fanzine Sonic Youth used to auto-edit last century) to Art Spiegelman’s “Maus”.

 Now … you may be thinking… those two haven’t been released under a creative commons license right? Right, they’re copyright, so here’s an issue for Silvia Nanclares and her team to organise the messy camping they’ve created so far: anyone can upload and download scanned or digital books. And now that we’ve recently got to know Megaupload got closed by some big brother, well… they should carefully pay attention to what the people are uploading.

Bookcamping
Bookcamping

One of the objectives of their about-to-finnish crowdfunding campaign (via Kickstarter Spanish-version “Goteo”) is precisely to “clean” and host only “free” content (for distribution at least we suppose), and that is a big challenge. Although if they succeed… and without looking at Google Books of course, maybe #bookcamping could become an amazing library for CC digitalized goods just like the Gutenberg project or some sort of Europeana. The initiative is not groundbreaking… but their ambitions are: involving editorial houses themselves or creating new business models around free licenses. Easy right?

Hopefully they’ll get very far, in the meanwhile you can help with a little donation to their crowdfunding campaign which finishes this Sunday. Good luck!

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ccMAD

18 January 2012

Quick reminder for those lazy souls living in Madrid! ccMAD will open its doors tomorrow for an intense 4-day Creative Commons Film Festival in the Spanish capital. A first for the city (a bit behind Barcelona as the Catalonian city organised last year their own and already 2nd edition of the CC festival, the BccN).

ccmad-poster
ccmad-poster

Much like the BccN, ccMAD proposes a list of talks, films and hours-long discussions around the potential Internet offers to film creators… who decide to use the CC licenses of course. The screenings and talks will take place in 2 places: La Casa Encendida & MediaLab-Prado.

The first will offer (with live streaming btw!) during the weekend the premiere of several films and a talk with Dutch director  Bregtje van der Haak (behind California Dreaming documentary) and Media Woman of the Year 2006. Other films include Maud & Leo by Jonny von Wallstram or our big favorite “An Island” by French director Vincent Moon.

But first … the festival presentaion @ Media-Lab Prado tomorrow! With a first talk by Guillermo Zapata, Pieter de Vos, Alberto Tognazzi and Stephane Grueso followed by the screening of a few shorts and on Friday more screenings, & more talks.

The festival is a copy of the BccN as we said before with a big objective: create a world network of CC festivals, so if you want to take the festival to your town just like in Madrid… you may want to read their helpguide. Oh and if you’re around Madrid… just visit … it’s free. More info this way.

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Save the Cosmonaut

28 May 2011

We’ve been following the Cosmonaut since we discovered it back in December (even if the project kicked-off more than 2 years ago), patiently awaiting a new trailer, a new sequence, news, script reviews, international collaborations, evolution of the funding… a big drama, but an exciting one.

Because since its creation, the Riot Cinema collective behind this idea (Nicolás, Bruno & Carola) have become one of the biggest European referents of community based filmmaking mixing the most popular financing &  production techniques the Internet era has brought… crowdfunding, community participation, early engagement with the viewers from the beginning of the project…. and a distribution of material licensed under Creative Commons.

the Riot trio (Nicolás , Carola & Bruno)

This is where the hype is now, and with successful examples & platforms such as Kickstarter (who have enabled crowdfunding for countless projects) they have a good chance to succeed if they make it appealing enough.

Apparently last week one of those big initial investors reduced his contribution to the film and now the guys behind the Cosmonaut are asking the community for a bit of a contribution… you know, the crowdfunding game again. They’re asking for small contributions from a couple of € to several hundreds.. and they need to raise the 4K figure within a month.

As it usually happens with this sort of projects the web community answer has been instantaneous and after just a couple of days they’ve already raised 92% of that big figure. We’re pretty sure they’ll have reached their goal before the weekend ends. But just in case we thought you could help them a bit just like us (this way).

For those of you who just discover this project, The Cosmonaut about “Stan” who in 1975 prepares himself to become the first Russian cosmonaut on the Moon. Andrei, his best friend, manages the mission; but in the tense last days before departure, Stan thinks about Yulia, the woman they both have been in love with since her arrival to the City of the Stars, more than ten years ago. Two days after takeoff the spacecraft loses communication with Earth and after many months the ship returns one day to earth… without the cosmonaut.

The big buzz around the project hasn’t been for the story itself but the great mix of crowdfunding, distribution and sponsoring plans they initially outlined to reach their 860.000€ budget… This first round of investment the project raised around 30K, but will they meet their ambitious plans?

financing plan

We really hope they do.

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Oxcars 2011

27 October 2006

Barcelona much like Berlin has a personal & internal competition to become Europe’s sharealike cultural capital. The Freecultural movement is alive and year after year the Oxcars night reminds us of such need. Artists and performers from all areas of Spanish and international culture take part in a “Gala” with all kind of surprises, pooling their efforts to demand a stop to culture being treated as merchandise by royalty management organisations and cultural industry lobbies.

Internet criminalization, limiting access and sharing of digital media has certainly become a massive issue most governments don’t know how to deal with, and so it’s always good social movements like La Ex remind public institutions of their real responsibility with the final end user… protection not prosecution.

The Oxcars are defined as “The First Non-Competitive Awards in the History of Culture” drawing attention to the fact that applying competitive criteria to the cultural sphere distorts its very essence. By highlighting different aspects of artistic creation, the “Gala Ceremony” shows that culture exists thanks to all of these complementary approaches that exist side by side.

Presented by Agnés Mateus the 4th edition of the Oxcars will see an even richer program this year with some well known artists like Spanish director Alex de la Iglesia, Aleix Salo or some directors working at Al Jazeera (the BBC news competitor who much like their English counterpart release big part of their content under Creative Commons).

The List of participants is quite impressive (full details this way), and much like previous years the event is free and should be streamed live the night of October 27th. In case you happen to be around Barcelona drop by Sala Apolo, and make sure you’re punctual… and you don’t work on Friday as the event runs for many many hours.

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