The second edition of the Bitfilm Festival, an event focused on movies about the Bitcoin and Blockchain world has recently ended.
The Bitfilm Festival is organized by Aaron Koenig, founder of Bifilm Production, a company which creates short videos for websites, specifically for Bitcoin and Blockchain companies.
Showcasing Technology
Since the 2000s, Koenig has organized the Bitfilm Festival, which previously showcased films regarding the use of digital technology in a creative and innovative way.
After Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin, Bitfilm Production decided to reinvent the festival and in 2014 it became the world's first film festival about Bitcoin.
‘The End of Money’ and ‘Bitcoin is like the Internet’
On February 24th the final screening took place along with the award ceremony for the 2015 edition of the festival.
Held in Buenos Airs, it saw “Bitcoin - the End of Money as we Know it” by Torsten Hoffmann winning in the feature film category and “How Bitcoin is Like the Internet in the 80s” by Joe Posener received the title of best short film.
The winners were chosen based on the amount the movies received from donators.
Donation Based Awards
During the entire period of the event (October - February) people could send Bitcoin to the films they like best. The two movies - one for each category (short / long) with the highest amount of donations would win the award.
“50% of the donations in each category went to the winner film, the rest could be kept by the film it was donated to. Total donations were in the range of 300 US Dollars, so not too much. We would have expected the film makers to make more of their friends and fans vote for them. But it's a new thing, so people have to get used to it. And who knows, maybe those few Bitcoins that the film makers received now will be worth much more in a few years. I remember that we first offered prize money to be paid out in Bitcoin in December 2011 when the Bitcoin was around 3 Dollars. Back then we did not have that focus on Bitcoin films yet, we showed all kinds of digital animation. We only had a few hundred dollars worth of prize money then, and Bitcoin was so new that film makers would not accept it and rather get the money in Euros. I think they regret it now, as their prize money would have been worth over a hundred times more today!”, explained us Aaron Koenig.
Evolving the Festival
There were many differences between the first edition and the second one.
Not only regarding the amount of donations but also for the number of movies, and the voting system.
“Firstly, there were many more full-length films about Bitcoin. In the first edition the only long film we could show was "The Rise and Rise of Bitcoin", this time we had four long films, each was coupled with a short film for the screenings”, said Koenig.
“We tried out some internet voting last time with MyPowers, but unfortunately that service ceased to exist before our voting ended. So this year we had a plain and simple Bitcoin voting: each film had its individual, publicly visible Bitcoin address and people could vote by sending Bitcoins to the films they liked best. As all the addresses were known and could be tracked, it was a completely open and transparent process which could not be manipulated by anyone”, he contined.
Torsten Hoffman, Director of “Bitcoin: the end of money as we know it” commented about this voting system:
“This is very transparent and how all film festivals should be run”, in fact this year votes and donations where completely public and visible on the Bitcoin address used.