During the week of 7-11 September 2009, Brussels will become the meeting place for the international documentary community and related new media practitioners.

Advancing from the success of the 2008 European Media Event, the 2009 edition will be a series of inspiring events - set in the welcoming environment of the Beursschouwburg, (a dynamic arts and cultural centre) and the Town Hall in the city centre. We will examine the influence of new media on formats and storytelling for documentaries and the possibilities the cross-platform media area offer.

The world of Cross-media is exciting, but also somewhat daunting since everything is so new, the tools and relationships with people are more complex, and the paths to revenues and financial sustainability are not always so clear. Mediamakers now need to be effective intelligence agents, capable of grasping and acting upon useful information in a swift and efficient way.

This isn’t easy and, thankfully, there have been more and more successful examples of integrated media.

THE SECOND WAVE will draw off of those successful examples and the talents who created them.

THE SECOND WAVE (7, 8 and 9 September) will be an immersive and collaborative experience. There will be plenty of useful insights in project development, with plenty of permutations of content, subject matter, old and new media components, and approaches to audiences.
There will also be useful and actionable ideas on where to find funds, how to cut costs, how to research and develop effective partnerships, and how to find and maximize in-kind resources.

In addition, there will be guidance on how to track the best practices in comparable projects and also help on where to go for inexpensive tools and delivery platforms, legal and marketing tips, technical advice, and guidance on levels of interactivity.

During this three-day workshop, under the guidance of Neil Sieling, from Link TV (www.linktv.org) and The Center for Social Media (www.centerforsocialmedia.org), and Docagora (www.docagora.org) in the United States, the participants will first be asked to pitch their project in its current form to the gathered experts, organizers and fellow participants before then being given the opportunity to work intensively on the further development of their project, assisted by international experts.

New media project concepts for development in this Lab are open – an interactive component of a TV series or the next long-form creative documentary, a mobile-doc, a gaming application for e-learning, among others. The options are endless, as long as the project is demonstrated to be practical and ultimately doable by the producing team, and offers a unique contribution to the digital documentary realm.

Participants and experts for the 2008 Second Wave sessions were impressed with the quality of the collaborations and generous sharing of information, experiences, and insights, the ‘The 2009 Second Wave sessions’ also aim to maximize the degree of generosity and collaboration.

Also on the program of EME:

DocScapes, a free documentary film festival with a selection of cutting-edge films, curated by Cis Bierinckx.
Come and enjoy them from 7-11 September 2009, at 7:00 pm.
You can find the full program and all info about the films on the website.

Variation, an exhibition of film and video works by eight national and international artists will lead you through the entire Beursschouwburg building.
Variation is curated by Katerina Gregos in collaboration with Contour 2009- the 4th Biennial of Moving Image and The People’s Cinema.
Free entrance, open every day, 7-11 September 2009, from 10.00am till 8.00pm.
You can find more detailed info on our website.