ATOPIC, Machinima Film Festival - official selection by the Jury

Atopic Machinima Film Festival just published their official list of machimima movies selected by their Jury. I'm happy to see two of my productions ('the Graveyard' and 'Order in Chaos') selected.

"The international dimension was in the richness of the final selection. This selection shows that Machinima has matured in the use of the tool and was able to develop a narrative and aesthetic quality. "

23 films were selected :

55 Sounds To The Sky // Christine Webster et Balthazar Truffaut
A change of art // Luxaeternam
Clear Skies 2 // Ian Chisholm
Ctrl,Alt,Del // Trace Sanderson
Dagon // Trace Sanderson
Fears - [ The Story of Susa Bubble - An Installation by Rose Borchovski ] // Iono Allen
Gcity // Marco Manray
GTAlphaville // Mutatis Mutandis
Incubus // Kate Lee & Sherwin Liu
La Crise // Panda
La fuite de l'empire Aryen // Yälrok
Lovely Family TV // The Lovely Team
mAdvertising // Pooky Amsterdam
Order in chaos // Rohan Fermi
Over Data // Marco Manray
Panic Radio // François Pallin
Stop, Rewind // Harrison Heller
Terra // Rod Pulsar
The Graveyard // Rohan Fermi
The Trashmaster // Mathieu Weschler
Unheimliche // Delbos, Gaudillere, Le Roy, Mutton, Van Lissum
WB Yeats - An Irish Airman Foresees His Death // Russell Boyd
What a night ! // TGO GMBH

The 13 members of the Jury:

Julien Aubert, Transmedia/ARG Executive Producer, Bigger Than Fiction
Thierry Falcoz, Video Games News Director of Nolife TV
Caroline Piras, Director
Laurence Herszberg, Manager of Forum des Images
Catherine Lottier, Journalist
Vincent Ravalec, writer, director and screenwriter
Stéphane Natkin, Manager of ENJMIN School in Angoulème
Benoit Labourdette, Pocket Film Festival
Geraldine Gomez, Hors Pistes Festival, Centre Pompidou
Isabelle Arvers, New media Curator
Jean Menu, Video Games Representative, Universciences
Moira Marguin, In charge of Animation Department, Ecole des Gobelins
Margherita Balzerani, Curator and Art Critic

The criteria on which the jury deliberated were : the originality of the script, staging, quality of the soundtrack and editing, the technical and aesthetic qualities linked with the diversion of the game. The choice was difficult, the debate alive. The diversity of films and the skills of the members contributed to the interest and the uniqueness of this selection.

Festival News and more

For reasons of schedule and availability of rooms, the Atopic Festival has been put back until December 2010. Soon they'll publish the new dates of the festival.The contest is still open for submissions until November, 10th. For more informations contact: machinima@atopicfestival.com

MachinimUWA II: Art of the Artists challenge transcript of the announcements & full winner's list is now online available at this UWA-Blog post . I've had my newest movie "Order in Chaos" submitted but it didn't find any recognition there.

Bitfilm Festival has just announced the winners of the Bitfilm Awards 2010. 1. Prize winner is "The Y-Files" by Alexander Gellner & Flix (Germany). You can still watch all nominated films. As far as I have seen there were no machinima movies nominated. I have no information if any machinima has even been submitted this year.

Thanks to Curator: Lara Sánchez Coterón from Proyecto Amarika, Madrid, Spain a selection of Machinima (music videoclips and experimental animations) will be screened 21st OCTOBER 2010 at this years PLAYFUL & PLAYABLE FALL MEETINGS: A knowledge exchanging platform, about the game as a cultural process. I'm proud to see my movie "Liberty City" being screened alongside work from Paul Marino, Friedrich Kirschner, Zach Scott and others.

For the first time this years EXPO 2010 (Shanghai China) has screened machinima movies. Curator Cristina García-Lasuén owner of the OPEN THIS END SL group and also known as Aino Baar in Second Life, approached Spanish officials for the World Expo with the purpose of bringing machinima to the attention of a greater audience. She was successful as they granted her several hours per week to display machinima simultaneously over five four metre wide HD screens which are attached to a structure called the "Air Tree" built specifically for the Expo at the Madrid Pavilion. I was really flattered to see 3 of my movies (Desassossego, Liberty City, the Graveyard) have been selected to be in the World Expo 2010.

Last but not Machinima Expo 2010 the worlds largest Machinima Festival will start in about 5 weeks from now (20-21th November). 200 films have been submitted and now some preselected 15 films are to be viewed by an impressive 5-person jury to choose the very best films for the Expo awards.