Documentaries: Internet Space

Gripping, revealing, controversial and provocative, the award-winning documentaries chosen for the 15th Athens International Film Festival clearly demonstrate that cinema and life are firmly interlocked. Under the common heading Internet Space, Opening Nights’ Documentary section brings together a group of films that delve into the deepest recesses of cyberspace to bring to the surface hitherto unknown stories of web life.

The first true online community and the exploration of one of the darkest aspects of the internet and its limits are, among else, the themes examined by the Internet Space documentaries section. A third film investigating the broader themes of space and its exploration will also be screened at a parallel section of the Festival, but we’re reserving more details about this for later.

In the early 90s, when internet had just begun to enter our lives, one man defined its future by setting up one of the most radical projects ever conceived: a small community of people sharing their intimate moments with the rest of the world through the first live online broadcast. The community was then perceived as a cult and its founder Josh Harris got himself arrested, but was later hailed as the "Warhol of the Web" and quite rightly so, as in time his ideas evolved into what we now know as Myspace and Facebook.    

As Ondi Timoner’s compelling documentary We Live in Public reveals, a few days before his mother’s death, Harris uploaded a video on YouTube explaining why he wasn’t planning on going to her funeral. Never one to shy away from using fellow human beings as lab rats for his grandiose and prophetic projects, Harris was arguably one of the first people to realize how internet revolutionized human relationships and the very notion of privacy. We Live in Public, screened exclusively at the 15^th Athens International Film Festival, is the shocking story of one of the most controversial and heinous figures to emerge in recent years.

The vast range of options readily available on the web is great for everybody ? and even more so for those into BDSM. In Graphic Sexual Horror, directors Barbara Bell and Anna Lorentzon interview the owner of perhaps the most successful BDSM site and ask difficult questions about the degree of personal responsibility involved in acts that test the limits of physical and mental endurance. Featuring deeply disturbing images (this documentary is emphatically not for the faint-hearted) and interviews with models and participants, Graphic Sexual Horror sheds light on a taboo subject.

But that’s not all. Other documentaries to look out for include Doug Pray’s Art & Copy, an insightful examination of mass marketing strategies. The masterminds behind world famous slogans, such as Nike’s Just Do It, and products, such as the iPod, reveal their secrets and explain how a simple idea can transform modern culture and, with it, global economy.

A crucial part of modern culture is, of course, fashion, whose trends, shaped by designers and magazines alike, change by the year -if not by the month. In The September Issue, director R.J. Cutler watches Vogue magazine’s legendary editor-in-chief Anna Wintour - the woman who inspired Meryl Streep’s character in the film The Devil Wears Prada - prepare the monumental September 2007 issue, which, weighing almost 5 pounds, became the single largest -and heaviest- issue in history. 

For more Festival news and updates check the 15^th Athens International Film Festival’s official website at www.aiff.gr and don’t forget to drop your comments at our blog (https://nyxtespremieras.blogspot.com/). We’d also like to remind you that as of this year you will be able to purchase your tickets online by credit card at no surcharge. Ticket prices remain steady at €6 for each screening.