AXIOM Alpha at the Festival Cinema Libre

Some members of the apertus° team attended the 3rd edition of the Festival Cinema Libre in Hamburg, Germany, to present the apertus° project and the opportunities provided by an open source camera for independent filmmakers.

The Cinema Libre Festival, as described on their website, is independent from the film industry and focuses on movies which are self-produced, crowd-funded or were created with no money at all. It offers a very diverse panorama of short and feature films, in various genres: documentary, fiction, experimental, or a subtle mix of all three of them! Most of the movies were distributed under Creative Commons or even copyleft licenses, and people attending the festival were able to download the movies they loved (or missed) during the festival. Worth mentioning is that two years ago, when the festival took place for the first time, it screened one of the very first movies made entirely with open source hardware and software (using an Elphel Camera, Cinelerra and Blender): Floresta Vermelha, by Brazilian director and former apertus° community and board member: Flavio Soares.

As the AXIOM Beta is still undergoing last tests and improvements before going to production, the presentation showcased the AXIOM Alpha prototype and its first features - enabling the audience to play with the AXIOM menu on their smartphones!

The questions proposed by people attending this festival were quite different from the ones we received in Clermont or at NAB and were more related to the political impact of such a project: will it lead the industry to more openness? How will such a development empower non-technical filmmakers (directors or cinematographers)? The debate also turned around the cost, highlighting the difference between open source and free of charge, but also between different industrial strategies: where other manufacturers try to cut down prices at all costs (not caring about fair labor, ecological issues or planning obsolescence of their own products), the apertus° project will allow to update both hardware and software, to repair parts or to recycle old components. Eventually, we discussed the ecosystem and the possibilities for groups of individuals to mutualize the buying of an AXIOM and to maintain it with the help of the local and global community.

After the presentation, the conversation went on more informally at the bar while the screenings resumed and plans for a bigger workshop about open source post-production software and projection tools were made for next year's Festival Cinema Libre edition.