The best of the best

Prize-giving ceremony in the Russian embassy, Unter den Linden, Berlin. (twb)

During the past year a universe of programmes and productions have been broadcast and published. 235 of them, the very best, made it into this year's competition, 5835 voting sheets and 29.175 ratings were processed. The juries have spoken. These are the best of the best.

Success makes you lonesome they say. That's rubbish of course. You came here alone, and you go home accompanied by a bull. Well done!

Category	Title	Country
TV documentary	"Meet the Fokkens"	Netherlands
TV fiction	"We'll Take Manhattan"	UK
TV fiction serial	"The Bridge"	Sweden
TV current affairs	"Permission to Engage"	Netherlands
TV Iris (best multicultural TV programme)	"Special Flight"	Switzerland
TV marketplace of innovation	"Basta"	Belgium
Prix Genève Europe (best TV fiction script)	"Inside"	Netherlands
Languages Through Lenses (students' short films on learning languages)	"Snow White"	Netherlands
Radio documentary	"Holiday for Life – European Dementia Patients in Care in Thailand"	Austria
Radio investigation	"Radio Simoom"	Sweden
Radio fiction	"Category 5: How I Rescued Fats Domino From Hurricane Katrina"	Switzerland
Radio fiction serial	"1-Minute Small"	Netherlands
Radio music (programmes on music)	"Warsaw Variations"	UK
Radio marketplace of innovation	"Hackney Hear"	UK
Online	"The Art of Pho"	Netherlands
Best online innovation	diy.fm – "Radio à la Carte"	Switzerland
Prix Europa lifetime achievement award	Prof. Regina Ziegler	Germany

Insights II

What does it look like when 1000 European journalists and producers meet, view and listen to each others programmes in order to passionately discuss them? The Berlin-based photographer Julia Zimmermann tells us.

Insights I

Here they are: Jan Kopetzk's first photographic impressions of this year's Prix Europa, giving a proper view on the jury work and the passionate discussions of programme makers coming from throughout Europe.

Where is the blogger?

Radio documentary jury, discussing. (Jan Kopetzky)

Picture puzzle: Where is the blogger?

Time machine

Haus des Rundfunks, paternoster elevator

Same procedure as every year: As soon as I enter the Haus des Rundfunks I peek around the corner in order to see if it's still there: that fascinating old-fashioned elevator called "paternoster". It must be one of the last of his kind (and unfortunately it is out of order at the moment), but if you can you should not miss using it. It will not only carry you to another floor but through the centuries.

The festival bible

Prix Europa paperwork.

Here I am, essentially the same (blogger? fool? both?) I used to be last year. The Prix on the other hand isn't. Additional bookshelves have been set up, shiny new panels installed, more than 850 participants have registered, 300 of which will be in the jurys.

Yet, really good things never change. The Prix Europa bible for instance. All those great TV, radio and multimedia productions, the authors, directors, producers, casts - a Who Is Who of media throughout Europe.

And yes, there is that little sheet on top of the pile, with that one remarkable sentence:

"Thomas Weibel will be blogging again during the whole festival week. He is amazingly particular and quick and tends to do rounds in all the categories. If you have anything you need to let all the other participants know - you need to buy him a coffee."

There's hardly anything more to be said. Just these two things you should never forget:

1. to check out the festival blog (once an hour will do),
2. the coffee bar at the Haus des Rundfunks.

"Ich bin ein Berliner"

"Ich bin ein Berliner" - soon enough, that is. Prix Europa, I'm on my way.

Set sails!

Get ready for Europe's best TV, radio and multimedia productions: The Prix Europa 2012 sets sails, and the voyage will last from October 20-27. See you at the docks in Berlin!

And the winners are...

Prix Europa 2011 award ceremony: The winners on stage. (twb)

So these are the winners of this year's Prix Europa, that amazing media festival awarding the best of the best public service productions: Congratulations! Well done! By today you belong to Europe's best media makers.

(And tidy up your desk – the Prix Europa bull will need some space.)

• TV Documentary: The Snow Ball War Darkness (Norway), Enemy Engagement (Germany)
• TV Current Affairs: Lost Honour – The Story of the Sürücü Family (Germany)
• TV Fiction: Sherlock – A Study In Pink (United Kingdom), The Strongest Man in Holland (The Netherlands)
• Prix Geneve Europe (best TV fiction script): Combat Girls (Germany)
• TV Iris (best multicultural TV programme): Winter of Love (The Netherlands)
• Languages Through Lenses (students' short films on learning languages): The Importance of Speaking Two Languages (Italy)
• Radio Documentary: My Grandfather’s Doublelife (Denmark), Ladies of the Manor – Scenes from a Marriage of Convenience (Austria)
• Radio Fiction: Tacet (Silence 2) (Germany), Home Goal (France)
• Radio Music (programmes on music): WDR 3 Favourites (Germany)
• Online: Nowhere Safe (France)
• Lifetime Achievement Award Radio: Raina Konstantinova (EBU)

The Top Five

Whatever production has made it to the Prix Europa, you will agree, belongs to the best productions there are. Yet, not any of them can win one of the bulls. So here is what the jurys have considered the top five of any category, the very essence of this year's Prix Europa.

25 years! Cheers!

Birthday party at the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin. (twb)

Hap-py birth-day to you,
Hap-py birth-day to you!
Hap-py birth-day
Prix Euro-pa,
Hap-py birth-day to you!

Reinventing public service media

Panel at the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin. (twb)

The panelists' names are a Who is Who of Europe's media landscape, assembled in the Collegium Hungaricum Berlin: Ruurd Bierman (Netherlands, NPO), Dagmar Reim (Germany, RBB), Ingrid Deltenre (Switzerland, EBU), Jean Reveillon (France Télévisions), Roger de Weck (Switzerland, SRG-SSR), Lauri Kivinen (Finland, YLE), Thomas Bellut (Germany, ZDF), and Arne Wessberg, former CEO of YLE, discuss the future of public service media.

Technologies change. Audiences change. Markets change. How can public service broadcasters meet the multiple challenges? How can they be faithful to their mission, keep up media quality and their specific values - and successfully compete with commercial companies at the same time, even with global media platforms such as Google or Facebook?

Back to the future II

Jens-Uwe Bornemann, head of the UFA lab. (twb)

The UFA, formerly "Universum Film" and founded in 1917, stands for the shining past of German filmmaking, and it equally stands for its future. Jens-Uwe Bornemann gives an insight into the work of the UFA lab, the new media content laboratory providing customised content for all new digital technology and distribution platforms.

As the film industry is about to merge with the game industry media makers have to meet new challenges. The UFA does crossmedia and transmedia experiments, and they started by providing a flat in Berlin-Kreuzberg equipped with all the infrastructure creative people need to produce any kind of digital content. "New media companies are driven by technology", Bornemann says, "but we care about content". The heart of the UFA lab is a development infrastructure where freelance talents can start developing whatever they are up to. One of the latest UFA lab projects was the transmedia movie "Who Saves Dina Foxx", a transmedia project of the German ZDF.

Media content and games, the web and mobile platforms, all mixed together: There are so many facets of media making yet to be discovered.

Photo gallery

Discussion in the radio doc jury. (Jan Kopetzky)

A blog needs photos, the more the better. The Berlin-based photographer Jan Kopetzky has been shooting the past three days, and his impressive shots illustrate what makes this competition tick. Have a look at the gallery on the right side - click to enlarge (and right-click to download). Enjoy!

Makes me hungry for images. Heading for TV documentary.

Silence

Haus des Rundfunks, main hall. (twb)

Day two, early in the morning. The main hall is deserted, the steps are echoing. A charwoman cleaning the floor, a barman switching on the coffee machine, a security officer ranting at the blogger for not wearing his badge. The rest is silence. A perfect beginning for a radio piece. Here we go.

The power of language learning

The Prix Europa "Languages Through Lenses" programme is a students’ competition open to short videos (60-90 seconds) promoting foreign language learning. Last year's winner, Richard Meitern's short film "No Fishing", was part of the opening ceremony, and this blog would be incomplete without it. So here we go.

(Noh, noh? You do not understand a word? Learn! It may save your life!)

Flashmob

Waltzing on a historic floor. (twb)

A flashmob turning the Haus des Rundfunks into a dancefloor. Slow media anyone?

Slowing down

Modern times are fast-paced times. But a media festival is not a race to run. Nor are media productions. The opening keynote is held by the former BBC journalist Angus Stickler (now Bureau of Investigative Journalism) pointing out that today's media lack both depth and quality. What the world needs is "slow media" instead of 24 hour "news processing", Stickler says: programmes that are better researched, better produced and presented with more care.

Sticklers example: Only by means of endless sifting through thousands and thousands of classified files published by Wikileaks in 2010, only by means of insistent investigation and thorough research, of classical, old-school journalism and a close collaboration of powerful media organisations the bulk of documents could be transformed into valueable media content - and, in the end, into the headlines the world still speaks about.

Today, we are overfed ad nauseam by an overabundance of content, literally one click away, the major part of it superficial, useless, unneeded, and unwanted. What the audience needs instead is quality, quality on all levels of research and production. Old-school "slow media", Stickler says, are not on the decline. They might well be the future of today's news industry.

"Hurtigruten" in the Haus des Rundfunks. (twb)

An impressive example for "slow media" comes from Norway. This year's summer NRK produced "Hurtigruten", a six day-and-night TV live documentary of a sea journey from Bergen to Kirkenes, Norway's northernmost harbor. To cut a long story short: The audience adored the broadcasts. (And so does the Prix Europa: "Hurtigruten" will be shown in the main hall of the Haus des Rundfunks. The full six days.)

Facts and figures

Prix Europa: endless rows of pigeon holes. (twb)

The Prix Europa, first held in 1987, is the largest and most renowned broadcasting festival in Europe. Eight days. 240 TV, radio and multimedia productions. 1000 journalists and producers from 40 countries, each of them eager to win the bull-shaped prize (not to mention the 6000 euros that go with it).

A place of history

Haus des Rundfunks, main hall. (twb)

The Haus des Rundfunks - or simply HDR as it is called these days - is one of the most important places in Europe's media history. Built in 1929, the HDR was the home of the National Socialist Rundfunk (1933-1945), the Sender Freies Berlin (1957-2003), and today it is the main building of the Rundfunk Berlin-Brandenburg RBB. (Read more.)

Haus des Rundfunks, paternoster elevator. (twb)

Yet the past is not just a notion within these walls. You can see it. Smell it. Hear it. Even feel it. Just step into one of the cabins of the Paternoster elevator carrying the jury members to their auditioning rooms. And if you do, you will recall Heinrich Böll's short masterpiece "Doktor Murkes gesammeltes Schweigen" paying tribute to a forgotten invention, and to the golden days of radio broadcasting.