Further Details of AIFF’s eMerge Transmedia Showcase Announced
The AIFF branches out with exciting new programming to add to our audience’s festival experience with the eMerge Transmedia Showcase. Created to showcase new forms of digital and interactive storytelling, the program has been developed in collaboration with Southern Oregon University’s Emerging Media and Digital Arts (EMDA) program. Below is more details on this year’s program events. Sponsors of eMerge this year include The Governor’s Office of Film and Television, Project A, Second Story, the Portland Incubator Experiment, and the Technology Association of Oregon.
A Culinary Video Expedition
Follow the Food
The AIFF invites you to explore the artisan food culture of the Rogue Valley through this collection of short videos produced in collaboration with SOU’s EMDA program. Each video celebrates the people and the processes behind local, sustainable businesses that nourish our bodies and our community. As you seek out each story in storefronts, table-side and on the streets of our town, share your experience via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Tumbler — whatever inspires you — and use the hashtag #followfood. And be sure follow the registration link at the end of each video to enter our drawing to win a delicious basket of Rogue Valley treats. We’ll announce the winner at our Awards Celebration on Sunday evening (you don’t need to be present to win). The program will be introduced at AIFF’s Opening Night Bash at the Ashland Springs Hotel, Thursday April 4th, 7:30pm. Ticket required. See page 14 for more information.
Emerging Media & Digital Arts at SOU (EMDA) is an interdisciplinary center at Southern Oregon University where students, faculty, staff, and community meet to conceive, produce, and evaluate original projects in digital media. For more information, visit: emda.sou.edu.
Live Community Storytelling Event
Immigrant Nation
Gallery Installation at Houston’s Custom Framing & Fine Art
270 East Main St., Ashland | houstonscustomframing.com
Opens First Friday, April 5 and continues throughout the festival
Immigrant Nation is a web-based documentary project created by AIFF alumni and Student Academy Award-winning filmmaker Theo Rigby (Close to Home, AIFF 2010, Sin País, AIFF 2011). AIFF festival-goers and the general public are invited to contribute their own personal immigration stories in 140 character increments beginning at the First Friday Art Walk and continuing throughout the 5-day festival. Illustrator Anthony Weeks will be on hand to translate community stories in real time to create a mural that reflects the collective contribution. See two of Theo Rigby’s Immigrant Nation short films, The Caretaker and The Mayor, in the Short Docs Program.
Immigrant Nation Hackathon
SOU’s Digital Media Center, 1525 Webster St., Ashland
Saturday & Sunday, 9am-5pm | Registration required
An event in which computer programmers and and others in the field of software development, like graphic designers and interface designers, collaborate intensively on a software-related project. Join forces with experts in Ashland for a two-day Hackathon and build a web-based installation with material drawn from AIFF filmmaker Theo Rigby’s Immigrant Nation project. Led by Rick Turoczy of The Portland Incubator Experiment (PIE), a hub for community, entrepreneurship, and creative thinking in Portland, Oregon, and Skip Newberry, President at Technology Association of Oregon.
For more information or to register, visit aiffhack.eventbrite.com
Transmedia 101:The Future of Storytelling
Free Talk Back Panel
Sunday, April 7, 10-11:30am
Ashland Springs Hotel
Join panel moderator Jim Teece, Managing Partner of Project A, as he engages in a lively conversation with Robert Arellano of the Center for Emerging Media & Digital Arts at SOU, Tawny Schlieski, from Intel Labs Interaction & Experience Research group, and Thomas Wester, the Innovation Director at Second Story Labs, along with filmmakers Theo Rigby (Immigrant Nation) and Roger
Ross Williams (God Loves Uganda). They’ll discuss the AIFF eMerge Transmedia Showcase, and their own work as storytellers and industry pioneers.