Abstract
Through an examination of the case study of Tuvalu Live, this chapter addresses the reception of German film through festivals—specifically transnational engagement with German film through a live event. Tuvalu Live was an ambitious live cinema experience which fused an open-air festival screening environment, a live re-scored soundtrack and digitally-triggered audience participation via an online web-app. Central to the Motovun Film Festival programme in July 2017, Tuvalu Live was a transnational experience based upon a German film (1999, Dir: Veit Helmer) which was screened to an international audience in Croatia—with bi-lingual textual instructions and subtitles. Through a close consideration of screening environment, film and audience, this chapter pays particular attention to the interrelations between these three key factors in live-cinema-event design, through participant-observation of both the creative process and the audience experience. Observations and insights into the production process of the live event—from its conception through to its reception—are provided as well as an examination of the audience experience design. The event included opportunities for both physical interaction of audience members within the screening environment, as well as the integration and enhancement of these through specially designed digital technologies. I argue that the Tuvalu Live project advanced three key areas: first, the practical experimentation and extension of the creative practices of live re-scoring and participatory cinema; second, it was a highly effective and affective application of the codes and conventions of live cinema, including instruction, screen-centric interactions ensuring audience complicity, therefore both evolving and crystallising live cinema exhibition aesthetics; third, and crucially, through a participatory dimension that transcended European borders, the delivery of live cinema within a festival context opened up a fruitful space for transnational engagement with European film.
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Notes
- 1.
Tuvalu Live was later presented in Hull as part of Hull City of Culture 2017 to a sold-out audience at Mr. Lee & IvaneSky’s first UK live show.
- 2.
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Acknowledgments
Lisa Brook and Live Cinema UK; Creative Media EU; Department of Culture, Media & Creative Industries (CMCI), King’s College London; Media School, University of Brighton; Helen W. Kennedy; Motovun Film Festival—Matko Burić, Igor Mirkovic, Vanessa Biljan, Vanda Volić, Campus Motovun, all the Motovun Film festival helpers, and CMCI student Katie Merriman.
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Atkinson, S. (2021). Tuvalu Live!: Live Re-Scoring, Transnational Digital Participation and Audience Engagement in a Film Festival Context. In: Herrschner, I., Stevens, K., Nickl, B. (eds) Transnational German Cinema. Global Germany in Transnational Dialogues. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-72917-2_5
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