As announced, Director Boris Seewald took part in the Panel Opportunities and Challenges Facing Film Festivals with Web 2.0 at the 25th international short film festival in Berlin.

Boris Seewald shared his experiences of making What a Witch and how to use social communities to make films known to a wider audience. He referred to sharing behind the scenes content and knowledge of filmmaking because that is what people (especially young filmmakers) are interested in.

Thomas Praus from Panorama3000 mentioned the importance of authenticity when promoting a film over the internet. One of his projects he supervised was Berlin Calling and he spoke about Director Hannes Stöhr who was in charge of the social communities by himself. Although Berlin Calling was a Film with a low Budget, it became a huge success.

The same strategy was used for Evet, ich will!, supervised by spikaseewald, where Director Sinan Akkus kept an overview on the content.

Dr. Ralf Schulze from UNERHÖRT! praised the possibilities of social communities, but also mentioned the mass of work and time it takes to use the internet for promotion. If it isn’t paid, young filmmakers have difficulty surviving which may lead to being burnt out as a result.

The discussion comprised of different topics which considered film in combination with the web. One big aspect of the discussion were the filmfestivals, which mostly don’t accept films that were previously released on the internet. For filmmakers this can often be an issue. If they release their films on the internet, they won’t have many chances to be shown at festivals. However on the other hand, if filmmakers submit their films to festivals, then they cannot share their work with the social communities.

Filmfestivals might be afraid of losing visitors if the films they present can already be seen on the internet. Concerning this “problem”, an interesting point was mentioned by Dr. Ralf Schulze: Although a film might be released on the internet, people will still go to the festivals, because they want to see the film on a big screen with good sound and to have that cinematic experience. People do not only go to festivals to see the films. They go because of the whole flair and atmosphere of a festival with its people, small talk, networking, contact making and after parties!

Talking about Festival 2.0, Eckhard M. Jäger spoke about his Webcuts festival, which shows films, commercials and music videos released on the web.

The discussion was led by Tillmann Allmer and afterwards What a Witch was screened to the audience.

A little report about the interfilm Academy with some outtakes of this Panel was released in Alex TV:

The 25th international short film festival interfilm berlin is the second oldest German short film festival and is recognised as the second most significant and oldest international film festival in Berlin after the Berlinale.

With 6000 entries from over 110 countries, the 500 best films were chosen to be screened.

With a range of lectures, workshops and panel discussions, interfilm also offers filmmakers, students and newcomers to the media industry the opportunity to grasp the basics, fill in knowledge gaps and gain profound insights into a variety of contemporary themes related to filmmaking.

Director Boris Seewald will take part in the Panel Opportunities and Challeges Facing Film Festivals with Web 2.0 and present What a Witch as an example how to use Web 2.0 for filmproductions and its marketing.

The panel will take place at Pfefferberg Haus 13 Schönhauser Allee 176, 3pm at the 5th of November

Panelguests:

Eckhard M. Jäger
Founder of the Internetfilmfestival Webcuts and Manager of the agency familie redlich

Thomas Praus
Social Media Expert and Partner of the agency PANORAMA3000

Dr. Ralf Schulze
Manager of the UNERHÖRT! Musicfilmfestival Hamburg and Amboss Film+Musik e.K.

Boris Seewald
Filmmaker and Director of the Open Source short film What a Witch

Moderation: Tillmann Allmer

Trailer of interfilm berlin: