FFD was again a lovely scene and event in Yogyakarta. It’s been a year since our last visit to the festival and it was so fun to meet many old friends in the same place. Our friends from FFD gave us two days: Dec 6th to present our videos and Dec 9th to join a panel discussion about “Video Distribution”. The video screening went well and very interesting topics came up in the panel discussion.
In the panel discussion, we discussed several hot topics such as how to manage videos and we compared several method for archiving video collections. Many people wanted solutions that would make it easier to maintain, copy and distribute their collections.
There was also questions like ‘How do we find a simple way to copy videos? How do we get permission for copying? What should we do if we’re dealing with copyright? Also, there was time to talk about how to sell video documentary. Most of the speakers and participants agreed that selling a video documentary is still a hard thing to do these days. While there have been many excellent video documentaries circulating among friends, not many of them went to the “market”. It’s as if people don’t or won’t buy a good video, but that may not be true. The real reason for the lack of sales is that, until now, all the tools and channel for distributing video are owned by big corporations or rich individuals.
Several people came with ideas about creating their own viewers in their communities by using new methods. For example using festivals and opening new spaces for youth to hang out could be options.
We were also eager to share thoughts on how cable TV and internet have changed our way of life and how these technologies are influencing videomakers. Keep in mind that the nature of these tools have forcing us to change the way we produce videos and in someway, the content inside.
At the end of the discussion, we came to agree that we also need to pay more attention to many old videos that are being host on our website. This is more about our responsibility to many of these video makers. There are several ways this can be done, for example, by helping to screen many of these videos, everywhere we go. And also to create more detailed information around each video, which is sort of a curatorial obligation to these old videos.
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