ITVS held court at the inaugural MEG 2012 conference, an event focused on creative approaches to content development, journalism, and entertainment.

On March 8th and 9th, I attended a new conference: Mediedagarna i Göteborg (Media Days Göteborg) or “MEG” for short. MEG was designed to attract media professionals from television, newspaper, magazine, and book publishing industries to participate in a truly trans-media conference. It was refreshing to see the overlap between the usually traditional media industries, like publishing, print and electronic journalism, and broadcast television interacting with citizen journalists, bloggers, and even webisode comedy.

MEG is the brainchild of the MedieAkademin, which also organizes the Göteborg Book Fair, Europe’s second largest book fair that draws over 100,000 attendees. Göteborg is also home to the Göteborg International Film Festival, Göteborg University, the Chalmers University of Technology, and is the city where Volvo was founded in 1927! It has a long and robust history of industry, culture, and technology, making it the perfect venue for this inaugural conference for cross-platform content.

Jigsaw Global’s Lisa Osborne produced special sessions on creative approaches to content development and asked me to introduce ITVS’s FUTURESTATES third season, whose website launched last week. Seven narrative shorts with surreal visions of the America of tomorrow will start to stream on April 3rd. Although the films focus on the US and are from American producers, the MEG audience appreciated the international and extra-terrestrial themes, as well as the high production values and were blown away by the series trailer. They were eager to see short futuristic and science fiction content online and will be able to watch the series streamed in Sweden.

Axel Arnö and Claire Aguilar at the MEG 2012 conference

I also spoke about the new campaign Why Poverty, a cross-media event that showcases content focusing on world poverty over broadcast, online, and engagement platforms. Our panel was moderated by the journalist Stefan Jonsson and was also presented by SVT’s commissioning editor, Axel Arnö. The big question is what can this campaign do to increase awareness of world poverty, let alone makes steps towards alleviating poverty, and in the light of campaign films and films about social issues and advocacy – how is Why Poverty’s campaign going to succeed? This panel happened the same day that the “Kony 2012″ viral video exploded on the internet and was viewed by millions on YouTube. What is the connection between our campaign strategy for Why Poverty, a collaborative event between millions of broadcasters, filmmakers, and viewers, and the viral campaign videos produced by Invisible Children, the company behind “Kony 2012”? Scheduled to launch in November 2012, Why Poverty will potentially reach over 500 million people.

The “Kony 2012” phenomenon sparked many of the key issues at MEG, bringing together journalists, broadcasters, publishers, and editors who not only discussed the changing and volatile media landscape, but also how to use social media in the search for truth and to discover what is behind that truth, especially in the context of a political or advocacy campaign. It makes you wonder, what responsibility do we have to the content that we create and consume?

Attention all filmmakers! We are days away from the Open Call deadline of this Friday, January 7, 2011.

Earlier today, ITVS Senior Programming Manager Richard Saiz spent an hour fielding questions from Open Call participants in a live video chat. Watch a replay of the event below (much easier to see if you make it full-screen).

Review the application details here and get your questions ready for Richard at noon Pacific on Wednesday. Once you provide your login info, start submitting your questions so we can get to as many as possible.

About Open Call

Open Call provides completion funds for single nonfiction public television programs on any subject, and from any viewpoint. Projects must have begun production as evidenced by a work-in-progress video. Open Call funding is only available to independent producers who are citizens or legal residents of the U.S. and its external territories.

ITVS Senior Programming Manager Cynthia Kane reports on a recent trip to Buenos Aires, where she attended the Latin Side of the Doc film festival.

I recently attended the second edition of this four-day co-production and networking rendezvous event between Latin America and Europe, with a strong North American delegation.

DocsBsAs and Latin Side of the Doc (which, by the way, is the fantastic team from France that brings us Sunnyside of the Doc each June in La Rochelle, led by Yves Jeanneau and Jean-Jacques Peretti) gathered filmmakers, producer,s and decision makers (commissioning editors, broadcasters, funders, sales agents, and distributors) from both sides of the Atlantic to share their experiences and mutual needs in order to build strong international documentary filmmaking network, and initiate international co-production projects.

Diana Holtzberg of Films Transit with her tango partner at Confiteria Ideal in Buenos Aires

Last year’s DocsBsAs welcomed more than 300 participants. This year, that number more than doubled. This event leads right into Ventana Sur, the largest media market in Latin America.  Both events took place at the splendid Puerto Madero neighborhood in Central Buenos Aires.

During the week, we participated in pitch sessions each morning, where 24 projects were pitched (12 European projects and 12 Latin American projects). I am thrilled to tell you that the Uruguayan project, Avant, directed by Juan Alvarez, and produced by Virginia Bogliolo won the Most Creative Pitch Award sponsored by ARTE France. ITVS International gave Juan and Virginia an R&D award at Docs Montevideo earlier in the year.

After lunches of empanadas and pizza, we went directly into our one-on-one meetings, of which I had 80 during the week!  There were many great projects pitched to me in those mornings and afternoons, and I am very much hoping for many of them to submit for International Call 2011!  (The 2010 deadline was last Friday, and we are still processing all the applications.  More on this soon…)

There was an excellent case study on the Mexican documentary, Agnus Dei, directed by Alejandra Sánchez, produced by Alejandra Sánchez, Celia Iturriaga, Carole Solive, and represented by Cathérine LeClef from CAT & Docs.  This is the first documentary from Mexico to deal with the controversy of sexual abuse within the Catholic Church and the story of a courageous young man, Jesús, who confronts his abuser.

The only time to see some tango was late at night, but that’s when the tango halls are most robust.  And it’s a must-see, must-try in this beautiful city.

DocsBsAs/Latin Side of the Doc is supported by Media International (European Union), the CNC (France), INCAA (the Argentinean National Cinema Foundation), ARTE, France Télévisions, Canal 7- Argentina, and Ventana Sur.

Open Call provides completion funds for single nonfiction public television programs on any subject and from any viewpoint. Projects must have begun production as evidenced by a work-in-progress video. Open Call funding is only available to independent producers who are citizens or legal residents of the U.S. and its external territories.

One question we get asked by many filmmakers concerns the previously completed work and work-in-progress requirements. If you’re still cutting, here are some tips on what to submit and what we’re looking for when we do our evaluations.

While we do ask that you not contact the team with questions about the status of your project (you will hear from us, we promise!), we wrote this article so you’d know what’s going on and when.

Please visit our website for all other guidelines and information on how to apply.

Good luck!