PRIX EUROPA

The Prix Europa is still a unique festival compared with the other media festivals. I am talking about the open structure of the 'Emerging Media' category, which is very refreshing. All contestants present and are jury members in the same time. There are presentations of twenty minutes and ten minutes of questioning. No discussion. At the end of the day the entries are all discussed in more or less heavy way. No closed rooms, but transparent and clear!

The Children for Children Karaoke from my country got a enthusiastic reception. The jury found the project highly innovative and right on target for a public broadcaster. They were impressed by the high level of participation.

In my opinion the Dutch entries are doing very well in media festivals the last four years. They have a real high standard of innovation and quality. Maybe the 'competition' between all the different Dutch public broadcasters, with their difference in identity and themes leads to a creative way of working. Maybe that the other countries with one main public service are more or less bureaucratic which for a part kills creativity.

Well, it was a long and heavy day again in the Emerging Media room... :-) But we saw some interesting stuff going on! A very nice German attempt to get a new young audience for classical music and jazz. An interesting drawing website from Spain for kids... and a very well made English website with a Spanish language course.

One of the 'hits' was a Czech project with often painful stories from eyewitnesses out of the sometimes traumatic Czech history. It was done in an impressive way.

My personal favourite was a Danish website about sports which are mostly not viewed in the regular sports program on TV. The content is provided by sports people themselves in cooperation with the sports unions. In combination with press releases and video uploads. Sometimes the content gets upgraded to the sports program on Tv. Interesting!

All the projects in competition are listed here

Have fun and auf wiedersehen. Und jetzt: Bier!

Ad van der Ree (VARA public broadcasting company Netherlands)