Hi everyone!
As you might know, Eurofurence e.V, the incorporated social organisation behind the Eurofurence convention, was invited by arte.tv to represent the Furry Fandom at an international festival and exhibition about subcultures in Paris.
Arte is a reknowned, publically funded broadcasting station specializing in art and culture in German and French language, and can be received either via Cable, Sattelite or Digital Terrestrial all over Europe. They run a weekly magazine called "Tracks" which is mostly about unusual subcultures. The festival was organised to celebrate the show's 10th anniversary, and so they chose adversaries from the most interesting subcultures they had ever reported about ... and they chose the furries to be one of them. Of course they would do a special show featuring just that festival.
The whole thing took place in December 2007, and as you might remember, I already posted a pretty long report (http://forum.eurofurence.org/index.php/topic,744.0.html) including our own documentary about the event, filmed by BigBlueFox. It took the nice people at Arte a little longer to get their act together, but a few weeks ago, the official show finally aired, and I would like to share it here with you.
I want to start by thanking the people at Arte (or more specifically, Programme 33, the production company in charge) for the respect they showed towards us, and for actually doing some good journalism. It showed from the first contact on that they really do care about the people and their culture, and I'm glad they did not just want to explout us like many other mass media, but made us feel both respected and appreciated. They even sent us a hand-written acknowledgement and a nicely packaged DVD containing a copy of the show we became part of. I wish all mass media would treat us like this.
(http://www.tigress.com/cheetah/lj/programme-33.jpg)
Everyone of the EF team worked very hard to represend our community in the best possible way. I'd like to thank (in Alphabetical Order) AOIKitsune, BigBlueFox, Deolup, Nightfox, owolf, TaniDaReal, Timduru, Tioh and Yakeo for making it possible! Now I'm sure you're curious to see the final broadcast. So here it is:
- Arte Tracks (edited) (download (http://video.bigbluefox-media.com/video/arte-tracks-080314-xvid-english.avi) - DivX, 215 MB) - Broadcast March 14th, 2008. Since some of the other parties interviewed in this show have some stuff to show that might not be worksafe, this version has been editted to mosaic out everything that might be too offensive. German Language with English subtitles provided by BigBlueFox.
- Arte Tracks (original) (download (http://video.bigbluefox-media.com/video/arte-tracks-080314-xvid-uneditted.avi) - DivX, 225 MB) - Broadcast March 14th, 2008. This is the version as it aired on German television, uncensored and without subtitles. BEWARE. Some scenes might not be suitable for the faint of heart.
- Bonus: Interview with the Editor (download (http://fursuit.timduru.org/dirlist/FursuitVideo/FurriesInTheNews/200712_TracksMondesHorsPistes/Tracks200803_ChiefEditors_EnglishSubs_sdivx.avi)- DivX, 47 MB) - This little feature was broadcast seperately as a trailer, and was also available on the arte.tv website. It features a short interview with the Tracks chief editor, who gives some interesting background information about the festival. French language with english subtitles provided by Timduru.
There should also be also a french version somewhere out there, but I don't have a copy because I'm living in Germany. So, if anybody has a full recording of the french version online, let me know, and I will link it here. Be prepared to handle some traffic, though :)
Our own report, including BBF's outstanding documentation about the event, is of course still available (http://forum.eurofurence.org/index.php/topic,744.0.html) in the old announcement posting from last December.
You're also invited to discuss this topic in the corresponding discussion thead (http://forum.eurofurence.org/index.php/topic,745.msg7349.html)