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Our documentary Hello Africa will be broadcasted via OKTO -Vienna’s public participatory television station. The channel can be recieved via Cable in Vienna region or online via webstream/IPTV.

Broadcasting dates:

Saturday, 19 June, 9:15 pm

Sunday, 20 June, 7:15 pm

Saturday, 26 June, 10:30 pm

Detailed program on OKTO

We are very pleased to announce that our documentary received an invitation to be showed at the NOW festival in  Barcelona, at the CCCB (Centre de Cultura e Contemporània de Barcelona).

The festival is going on between 26-27/3, and Hello Africa is to be screened on Saturday 27 March, 19:00 in the main foyer, listed under the New Activism category.

The festival describes itself like this:

NOW is a reflection on the present based on the scientific, technological, artistic, social and spiritual transformations that are taking place at the start of the 21st century. It is a process of research, creation and dissemination that aims to bring together different local and international agents involved in the actions that are promoting a change of paradigm in the information and knowledge society and in globalised cultures.

If you want to follow the event on Twitter, the hashtag is #now10. There is also a live streaming of the ongoing events on their webpage.

Our documentary Hello Africa continues to tour the world. Previously shown in Accra, Ghana, at the Maker Faire Africa event, 14-16 of August (Which we attended and covered in detail here) , and just recently we were honoured to be invited and have it screened at a festival event called May You Live in Interesting Times, in Cardiff, Wales, 22-24 of October. This was a three-day festival “that celebrates the latest intriguing uses of everyday technology and social innovation, enabled through shared ideas”, and the film was screened daily on their festival hub. Here’s a brief description of the core idea behind the festival:

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“With technology now firmly placed in the everyday we have put together a festival programme that explores how participation is increasingly the driving force behind much digital content. Mass-technology has enabled individuals and communities to become connected and share information.”

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Unfortunately we had no possibility to attend this great event ourselves, but according to Carolina Vasquez who is a festival coordinator there, the movie was highly appreciated by the audience and a “great success”. Check out the screening program here, and the Hello Africa entry here.

Due to some requests at Maker Faire Africa this weekend, I want to put up the links to download our documentary on mobile phone culture in Zanzibar “Hello Africa” once more.

There is a low-res streaming possibility at Vimeo:

Hello Africa from UZI MAGAZINE on Vimeo.

And there is a torrent for downloading the hight quality version:

http://www.mininova.org/tor/2605425/

All material is published under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY-NC-SA). More info at uzi.se and ict4d.at/helloafrica.

This weekend in Accra the Maker Faire Africa will take place.

It’s supposed to be

a celebration of African ingenuity, innovation and invention

and countless interesting and innovative people and groups will attend.

ICT4D.at will also take part and I will screen our movie Hello Africa there. Of course I’ll also write some blog posts. The people from International Development Design Summit will show their prototypes once more and for more detailed information what will be going in look at the Program of Maker Faire Africa or check out the Blog of Maker Faire Africa.

So if you’re in the area - make sure to be there, it will definitely be great and probably even THE African tech event of the year.

On Maneno, there is an aggregator on the Maker Faire hashtag “mfa09″. Check it out to stay updated.

Since the grand opening of our documentary at the Schikaneder Kino in Vienna, we have been busy distributing it through different channels. Several cinema screenings are already planned, and we’re promoting it to film festivals around the world. Confirmed screenings and dates will be published on our Hello Africa Wiki page.

The movie is released under a Creative Commons license, so it is available for anybody to watch and distribute for free. There is a online version up on Vimeo (488 views as of today), from there you can either stream it online, or download as a .mp4 file if you scroll down the page. Another option is to download a high-quality version on Mininova (705 downloads so far), where it’s featured as a high-speed torrent. This is a .ISO DVD file, 1.56 GB in size, which can be burned directly onto a DVD, or played within a media player of choice. Just grab the torrent file and download it with your favourite torrent client.

Since last week we also began to publish informational video snippets out of the movie, on our YouTube account. The video clips are putting the different uses of mobile phones into context and explaining some of the buzzwords as seen in the movie. We also have a lot of interesting clips that didn’t make it into the final edit, they will all be shown here, so keep an eye open.

This weekend was really great for ICT4D.at!

First we had the eDevelopment “Service delivery and eID” event on Thursday with interesting talks and eID specialist Carina Isabella Freudenthaler supporting us (Martin Konzett, Florian Sturm) live blogging and twittering.

In the evening there was the first member meeting with Anders Bolin (media), Oliver Stern (economics) and Jasmin Giama (PR/marketing) who came from Berlin for the premiere of our movie Hello Africa. We talked about how a PR strategy for ICT4D.at could look like.

On Friday also Jody (organization, finance) and Jason Knueppel (IT) joined us from Zell am See for the premiere of Hello Africa. It took place on Friday evening and was a big success - Schikaneder was full with approximately 85 people and we got great feedback. After some technical problems on the afternoon before we were happy that during the screening everything went well. The movie is now 49 minutes long, we need to do some more editing for the final DVD but soon it will be possible to order the movie from us.

On Saturday we had another member meeting talking about the future of our organization and Oliver proposed a new project, acting as hub between donors and aid agencies in the field of ICT4D. We’ll work out a nice description and put in on the ICT4D.at projects page soon.

At the subsequent meeting on Sunday, Paul Pöltner (organization) joined us and we spent some hours aligning our organizational structure and talking about responsibilities. We’ve increased in members recently so going meta is vital for efficient work. We also agreed on a schedule for a planned book on how to manage an organization like ours - project BusinessForge.

So, happy to meet everybody, looking forward to working with all you people!

This Friday (8.5. 19:30 @ Schikaneder, Margaretenstraße 24, 1040, Vienna) we will have the premiere of our documentary project “Hello Africa” which we recorded last fall in Zanzibar.

The promo text of the movie:

Hello Africa is an experimental documentary about the emerging use of mobile phones in Africa. Just in the past recent years, mobile phone subscriptions, fixed lines and internet access have increased in Africa, quicker than in any other region on earth. These rapid changes, the implications it has on African society and impact on social life in general is the reason for making this documentary.

The film is shot on the island Zanzibar outside Tanzania, considered to be one of the most enigmatic and cosmopolitan places in Africa, rich with contrasts and cultural heritage from many civilizations. It shows encounters with people from all backgrounds and proffessions; street rappers, primary school teachers, Massai watchmen, seaweed farmers, fishermen, multimedia students, nightclubbers and many more. What they all share in common is their opinions, habits and usage of cellphones, in private as well as proffessional life.

With a great music soundtrack and beats, this film wants to send a strong and positive message about the many possibilities that the new communication technologies brings, and in a larger perspective to  get attention to issues on how to “bridge the digital divide” between developed and underdeveloped countries.

A joint film project between Swedish DVD Magazine UZI and Austrian NGO ICT4D.at. More info: http://wiki.ict4d.at/Hello_Africa and http://www.uzi.se

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Here is once again the trailer:

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The screening will take place at the movie theatre Schikaneder in Vienna at 19:30 on Friday 08. May, entry is free.

Afterwards we’ll have a release party - so make sure you come by if you have time.

Just a short update from London - today we flew here to attend Africa Gathering tomorrow.

Today we already went for dinner with Africa Gathering organizer Ed Scotcher, Erik Hersman, David McQueen and several other interesting people, it was a really great evening and food at Ethiopian restaurant Lalibela was superb.

I’m really looking forward to meet the people at the event tomorrow - around 200 according to the organizers. Martin will also have a speech and present the new trailer of Hello Africa. It can be viewed on Youtube (Hello Africa Trailer II) and according to editor Anders Bolin it looks best in HQ mode.

More tomorrow, we’ll keep you updated.