PressPausePlay is an award-winning documentary about our new digital culture which premiered at SXSW 2011 (we posted the trailers last year). You can watch it below. This free option was essential to the filmmakers. As Seth Godin says in the film, ideas that are free spread faster.
The movie examines the impact of today’s technology advances on our culture and the digital artists, musicians, and filmmakers who create it. In the film, Godin says “there has never been a better time to be an artist.” Taking a completely different view, technology pessimist, Andrew Keen, host of TechCrunch TV’s “Keen On“, says “we may well be on the verge of a new dark age… where the creative world is destroyed.”
We agree with Godin that, for content creators (and businesses) who are prepared to adapt quickly, it’s never been better.
The filmmakers ask the question:
“The digital revolution of the last decade has unleashed creativity and talent of people in an unprecedented way, unleashing unlimited creative opportunities. But does democratized culture mean better art, film, music and literature or is true talent instead flooded and drowned in the vast digital ocean of mass culture? Is it cultural democracy or mediocrity?”
The movie also addresses the troubling dichotomy that the same technology artists use to create their work also allows for easy pirating and destroys existing business models. The documentary doesn’t provide any easy answers, but it raises important questions about the impact to our culture.
