Between Nov 15-17, the copy-me creative team took a trip to the mountains, for the first ever preview screening of our upcoming animated webseries, at Romania’s first ever Creative Commons film festival.
Here’s a rundown of the weekend, as witnessed, experienced, and hashtagged by copy-me.
# what we did
- sat through a rundown of the Internet’s foremost hubs for open culture, as outlined by Tiberiu Turbureanu from the CEATA Foundation [Romanian language website];
- appreciated the effort of the Romanian Association for Technology and Internet (APTI) team to explain copyright and Creative Commons in a manner that’s both succinct and comprehensive; to view their full presentation online, click here [Romanian];
- presented the first ever episode of our upcoming webseries in a public screening, with an accompanying presentation;
- listened to Mihai Ghiduc explore a parallel between free apples and copying culture; would we/should we still pay for free culture?
# who we met
- Alina Floroi and Valentin Brutaru, the forces behind the first Romanian Creative Commons film festival; they won us over with infectious enthusiasm and an easy-going way of trusting that #thisisonlythebeginning;
- Brașov-based architects and videographers whose open and free work added color and motion to the festival venue;
- Mihai Bodea, a Brașov-born, Bucharest-based architect, whose forray into documenting the current rennovation of Bucharest’s National Theater turned into a collaborative project, screened at the Creative Commons film festival;
# what we remembered
- that plenty of Romanian filmmakers have been licensing their work within the Creative Commons framework: veioza arte and Stanca Radu are just two examples we were glad to come across once more;
- that a classic is a classic is a classic: from Nina Payley to Vincent Moon to public domain Russian silent masterpiece Battleship Potemkin, to Steal This Film 2, to Everything is a Remix – so many must-sees, so little time, right?
# what we realized
- that, just like Spain has got its BCCN [Barcelona Creative Commons Film Festival], Romania surely deserves its own, too;
- that it’s essential to support independent initiatives through attendance, involvement, and donations, no matter how small they may seem at first – how else would they grow?
- that good ideas will always find a way to duplicate, replicate, and propagate themselves, because copying is a ritual.
