Looks like I’ll be joining a panel at the New York Film Fest this Saturday night at 7pm to speak about transmedia activism and documentary films. If you are in town and interested in the subject, please stop by and say hello (while asking a question in the Q&A perhaps). The event is in the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center Amphitheater at 144 West 65th St, which is a good space for this type of event (seriously, it’s great for a conversation).

Here’s the description from the festival (more panelists TBA):

Session 2 of “Beyond the Screen: The Immersive Media Forum.”

Through the last century documentaries have played a pivotal role informing the public on issues of social and global justice and have served as calls to action, mobilizing citizens and leaders.  As filmmakers and advocacy groups meet on the fluid platforms of the web, a new form of activism has emerged, dubbed “Transmedia Activism.” This panel will discuss this emergence, and the role traditional documentaries and web savvy advocacy groups will play moving forward.

Beyond the Screen: The Immersive Storytelling Forum
Contemporary technologies have always had a profound effect on the way we tell stories.  Just as the printing press paved the way for the novel and television gave us the sitcom, so to the computer is changing the face of entertainment.  This is by no means a new idea – critics, creators, and audiences have been talking about the fact that the digital age is altering the traditional role of the storyteller and audience for some time.  What we hope to do at the Beyond The Screen is to move the conversation along, if only by asking one very simple question: “How?”

It’s a new age for telling stories and with it comes a new set of rules, a new critical vocabulary, as well as new models for doing business.  From video games with ever more realistic graphics and complex narratives to immersive worlds built atop our own that permit audiences to physically explore story in three living dimensions, a change is taking place.  Audiences are transitioning from simple consumers of entertainment into dynamic participants in their media of choice.  Beyond the Screen is a series of panels, presentations, and special events that seeks to draw together the makers driving these changes – the writers, producers, story architects, and designers in the fields of transmedia and video games – for a discussion of the state of the art as well as an exploration of the roll film has played in effected these emerging modes of storytelling…and how these emerging fields have effected the relatively new art of film.  Designed to be accessible to both active producers of transmedia and those just discovering the form (or forms as the case may be) for the first time, BEYOND THE SCREEN aims to change the way you think about storytelling – from how story is told to who is telling it.