Bitfilm Festival will be opened on November 6 followed by world’s tour of cinema screening.
Great news for those who produce films about bitcoin and in general for all bitcoin enthusiasts! The Bitfilm Festival announced the start of a new competition for the best bitcoin film today. The opening will take place in Berlin’s Kino Central on November 6.
Thereafter the festival will go beyond Germany. The world’s tour will include San Francisco, Saigon, Buenos Aires, Mexico, Budapest and Amsterdam with even more events announced soon. Winners will be awarded at LaBitConf in Mexico City in December 2015.
A few facts from the history of the Festival will help you to better understand the basic idea. Aaron Koenig founded the Festival in 2000. At that time, 15 years ago, the event was devoted to 3D animation and digital effects.
Afterwards the topic seemed too narrow to Koenig and films made for mobile screens, films made with computer games and real time demos were added. Thus it turns out that initially Bitfilm festival had nothing to do with bitcoin and the name stood just for digital film.
The producers of the Festival have used bitcoin as a form of prize money and voting tool only for the last two years. Aaron Koenig admits that they were so fascinated with bitcoin that decided to re-invent the whole festival to become the world’s first competition of films devoted to this cryptocurrency.
“Our goal is to reach “normal” people, who are interested in Bitcoin, but would not go to a conference or a meet-up, because they think it’s too geeky for them. Film is a great medium to explain Bitcoin in an easily understandable, entertaining way, and a festival that travels the world is the perfect platform to show them to a broad audience,” he says.
Koenig doesn’t make any secret of his skeptical attitude to bitcoin at the very beginning. The idea of the currency which is not backed by anything didn’t seem reliable to him. Having conducted his own research, he understood that “bitcoin simply does not have to be backed, because it has the same qualities that made gold and silver the money of choice for more than 5,000 years.”
The organizers have revealed some of movies from Festival’s program. Thus its guests will have an opportunity to enjoy “The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin” by Nicholas Mross (which is a headliner by the way), “What is bitcoin?”, “Bitcoin properly”, short documentaries “Bitcoin in Uganda”, “Bitcoin: Buenos Aires” and “Declaration of Bitcoin’s Independence” and many others.
Bitfilm itself produces commercial movies, mostly for bitcoin companies. Aaron Koenig is also working at his own Bitcoin 2.0 start-up but he doesn’t reveal the details at this point. As a person whose activity is closely connected with bitcoin industry, Aaron especially appreciates projects which use bitcoin principles in other spheres, thus expanding its boundaries.
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