There’s a new town in town

Since 19th February, lucky Amsterdam has Cineville.nl, a collector for all films on exhibition in the city’s 13 film theatres. The site contains synopses, trailers, reviews, and film news. But most importantly, it provides an overview of what’s on, where, and when – something we’ve all been sorely craving for.

Even better, €17,50 a month gets you into 550 exhibitions per week and 400 specials per year, in any of the cinemas, whenever you feel like it. So do away with the dissatisfaction of your monthly television subscription fee, and get something of real value.

The Cineville pass is already on sale online (click here), as well as at Cinecenter, Kriterion, and Rialto. But if you join the crew at Vive La Ville! – Cineville’s launch party on 27th February in Studio/K, you can have one made on the spot, in between your dance floor braveness.

(screen shot Cineville by de Balie, by me on Flickr)

When I saw this I’d already made the step from writing a résumé to making an online slideshow portfolio. But ‘Moving’’s imagery and soundtrack convinced me of the power of film (or better yet, re-awoke me to the idea – I did study the subject).

So here’s a tribute and a thank you to Lukas, who helped turn me into a self-proclaimed film making genius. Click play below to watch ‘Moving’; see my own concoctions by clicking here.

Lukas van de Vrande is an Amsterdam-based artist. He not only puts his work up for sale, but also rents it out. So if you like his work but can’t afford to buy something now, build up a credit by renting so you can buy one of his pieces later – a bit like Dutch Art Loan.

Check out his website (in Dutch) by clicking here.

Thanks to Wouter for enlightening me.

(photo Lukas Art by Textz (a sculpture by his 8 year old son sculpted it, so not to be confused with one of Lukas’ works).

In its recently published report, TNO – Dutch public institution working for the applicability of scientific knowledge in government and industry circles – concluded the following: access to a wide range of cultural goods increases out well being, simply because most of us would never have bought our downloaded content.

File shares are financially unable – or plainly unwilling – to buy many of the things they’re enjoying via p2p networks. And getting stuff for free obviously makes us feel nicer than not getting the stuff at all.

But before we’re made to believe that companies should be losing their money for a public cause and an economic externality – even when both of them are nice side effects, the report’s researchers also found this: people who download music and film are buying no less than people who don’t.

Gaming company Electronic Arts admitted last year that ‘every Bittorrent download doesn’t represent a successful copy of a game, let alone a lost sale’. This report goes one step further: file sharers visit concerts and buy games more often than those who don’t.

And while the Netherlands’ entertainment industry continues to suffer losses in the order of €100 million per year, consumers are spending an estimated €200 million per year more because they have free access to not-so-free content.

So now its official: the industry’s arch nemesis is a very successful marketing tool. Yet, as the report will have it (of course), within the music industry it’s the lesser-known bands that profit the most from file sharing.

To me, another sure sign of a playing field in transition. While most big and established companies are slow to recognize that bygones should be bygones, the smaller, newer ones see opportunities in the web. Instead of whining about it, they’re discovering how they can monetize on the Internet as a non-exclusive distribution platform.

And let’s not forget about us consumers, and how this report will make us feel even better than we already did. As dxtr says in reply to Torrentfreak’s post on the subject: ‘Wow! I never knew that I had been contributing to the growth of my country’s economy since age 10! That is so cool!’

More

• Read the original Torrentfreak post on the report by clicking here.
• Read the full report (142 pages – and in Dutch), register and  download it for free by clicking here.
• Read how EA’s view on piracy is changing – and how they’re trying to emphasize the non-piracy prone aspects of their games, by clicking here.
• Check dotbejamin’s ‘Failing Industry’ post, which accompanies the picture shown above ().
  

Brilliant street art/animation combo by Argentine-based artist Blu, even more so when you consider how it was made. Once shot, a mural painting had to be destroyed to make room for the next one, so there was no possibility of reworking and re-touching old frames in the studio.

Click play on the screen below to watch the 7-minute film, and have a look at the brilliant blublu.org website.

Also check out Baptiste Buonomo’s 2005 film Virus (further down).

Thanks to Ime for passing it to me.

(photo IMG_5043.jpg by Matt Woolner)

Very clever, extremely humorous, and free to watch (donations happily accepted). Click play on the screen below, and/or read on for a textual nutshell.

Beware of People

Society has become cultural industries’ biggest competitor. Copyright law – and especially all its subsidiaries (many of them lobbied into life because of the Internet), is working extremely hard to prevent this competitor from moving around in a free market.

People now have cheap access to the tools that used to be reserved for heavy-on-equipment, professional creators. This allows almost anyone to be a producer of culture instead of a mere couch potato.

But the kind of creativity this spawns is dangerous for the well being of the established industry model. So its moguls call out to their exterminating agent: copyright law.

By suing the fans, the industry hoped to make set an example to all the downloaders and remixers out there. But, for one, bald chickens make for bad plucking: they don’t make any money from what they’re doing; they don’t have the money to pay the required fees for what they’re doing; and if they did, it would take someone like GirlTalk – musical cut, edit, mix and mash up genius, about 50 years to clear all the rights for what he’s doing (click here for my personal selection of the late greats of 2008, including a GirlTalk track).

but more importantly, it doesn’t work. If anything, it’s destroying what little credibility big creative industry companies still have in fostering cultural development. So where’s the fun in that? What’s it helping anyone?

The only one making a ‘better’ living through all of this is the lawyer who gets to spend his expensive hours suing twelve-year old girls.

Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying About Reality and Love the Remix

If you know where you’re music’s being played the most, you’ll better be able to decide where you should be on the stage. If you sell a live registration of your concert, to the audience, immediately after your performance, your studio work is but a marketing gimmick for the real thing – the real experience connected to a specific place and time.

So instead of going after downloaders and the remixers, to try and punish them so to set an example for the rest of us (or: to fence in what’s turning into common cultural practice), entertainment moguls should really be looking at them as a source of business model inspiration – or even as partners.

Emerging cultural forms of production are the R&D-labs of cultural industries. Not only do they provide insight into what’s driving potential consumers, they’re brimming with enthusiasts promoting someone’s work for free. Such developments are an opportunity, and seeing this allows companies to rethink what makes their business. Yet few are able to let step out of the comfort zone, to nurture this new practice, and make it work for instead of against them.

‘You can’t be taller than me and shorter than me at the same time. You go ahead and take the high-end of the market; let us play elsewhere. We’ll happily occupy that space.’ This film is remixed poetry – in images, music, and words.

Thanks to Rolf @ Loupe for letting me know.

(photo IMG_0729 by mecredis)

Sadly, the trailer doesn’t entice me all that much. Nor does the formulaic plot: the three ‘characters, unknown to one another as well as to themselves, would never have met were it not for…’ has pretty much been milked off (Inarritu managed to pull it off three times with Amores Perros, 21 Grams, and Babel).

Still, delegating your editing skills like this makes for an interesting experiment in interactive viewing – not least because it finally turns the remote into more than a couchpotato facilitator. And if you do like the film, you’ll never need another – this one’s different everytime you watch it.

Photo Ana Serano by tyfn.