Berlin

More than 350 international media experts attended the second Berlinale Keynotes organized by the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the Berlin International Film Festival and held in the Palmenhof at Berlin's Potsdamer Platz on Tuesday. Under the motto "The Age of Collaboration," the Keynotes focused on new creative and strategic alliances between film, games and Web 2.0 in the age of Wikinomics and games. The event was officially opened by Medienboard co-managing director Petra Müller and Berlinale director Dieter Kosslick.

"The Berlinale Keynotes once again played host to major figures from the digital avant-garde. The main topic of discussion was the future of film in the age of Web 2.0, Wikinomics and games," explained Müller. "While a film will always be a film, the conditions for production, distribution and reception - perhaps even cinema genres themselves - are set to change faster and more radically than we think."

"It is very good that we are discussing the future of the film industry in the Kaisersaal - a room with such a tremendous tradition. It shows of the extent to which the Berlinale is eager to include in its program the current discourse on innovation in new media," argued Dieter Kosslick.

In his Keynote speech, Don Tapscott, a successful advisor, author, professor and chief of the international think tank New Paradigm, spoke on the Internet's effects on the film industry and cited new opportunities for cooperation in production, distribution and marketing. Matt Hanson, director, producer and founder of the Visual Intelligence Agency, supported Tapscott's thesis when discussing his current film, A Swarm of Angels, a project that represents a break with traditional production processes and successfully involves the creative potential of a web community of over 1000 members. Ton Roosendaal, head of the Blender Foundation and chief developer of Blender, the free 3D graphic software, demonstrated that professional animation software is not reserved for major Hollywood studios. In fact, the content and technical implementation of his current open movie project "Peach" is being developed with the help of his free software and the input of developers from all over the world. 

Jade Raymond, a video game producer at Ubisoft and creator of "Assassin's Creed" - a game that has sold 6 million copies since entering the market in November 2007 - showed how attractive the games industry already is for filmmakers. She called on both branches to come together to exchange experiences so that both could profit further from collaboration in the future. The tremendous potential of such co-operation was elucidated by Jordan Mechner, a screenwriter and games developer who recently sold the film rights to his successful computer game "Prince of Persia" to Disney. Producer Jerry Bruckheimer has now hired him to write the film version of the game, which is set to be Disney‘s summer blockbuster in 2009.

All Keynote speakers agreed that the entire media industry is poised on the verge of what promises to be a very exciting development. Not only does interdisciplinary exchange among media unveil new and creative potential, it also allows all media branches to profit in both economic and technological terms from this innovative cooperation. 

The Berlinale Keynotes are available as streaming media at www.medienboard.de/berlinalekeynotes as of today.

The Berlinale Keynotes are an initiative of the Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and the Berlin International Film Festival in co-operation with the Medienanstalt Berlin-Brandenburg (Medienwoche) and media.net berlinbrandenburg.