Arte.tv internetissä. Don Edkins 27.10.08
Today the first documentary commissioned for the internet by Arte France starts its broadcast. GAZA SDEROT – Life in spite of everything is an experimental 60 day interactive project designed the interactive production company Upian.com and produced in Paris by a French documentary production company Bo Travail!, together with Arte France and its web team.
Each day two short 2-minute films will be shown – one from Gaza (Palestine), one from Sderot (Israel), two neighbouring towns but divided by just a few kilometers and the impenetrable border between them.
The short films will be about life as experienced by the people who live in the separated towns and their daily survival. Under difficult living conditions and the threat of air attacks and bombings, people keep on working, loving and dreaming. Life in spite of everything.
The Palestinian team Ramattan Studios and the Israeli team Alma Films/Trabelsi Productions shoot and edit the two minute pieces each day and FTP them to Paris where subtitling and any final editing takes place. The films are then uploaded for broadcast each morning.
Blogs allow people to add their views and comments, characters can be viewed independently of the short films, and viewers can go back to previous days transmissions.
The project can be viewed and in Arabic, Hebrew, French, German and English. And it can be seen anywhere in the world.
I saw a developmental version two weeks ago at the Esodoc workshop in Sicily presented by Alexandre Brachet from Upian which did all the design of the website. It looks great and easy to navigate and use. Is this going to be followed by further documentary film projects commissioned by broadcasters for the internet?
On Saturday the company won the Prix Europa for Best European Emerging edia Project of the Year 2008.
Log on to the films at
http://gaza-sderot.arte.tv/
