Bitcoin Film Festival in Warsaw
The bear market may rage on, but that won’t stop Bitcoin (BTC) shooters, creators, and filmmakers from producing new content.
The first edition of the Bitcoin Film Festival was held in Poland’s capital, Warsaw, in March. The festival brought together Bitcoin advocates and movie lovers from around the world to sit through some of the most famous Bitcoin movies and documentaries.
Hosted in the Kinoteka Theater of the iconic Palace of Culture and Science, the Bitcoin Film Festival celebrated Bitcoin’s growing global influence while highlighting the thriving cultural movement that underpins the digital network. Some talents from the Bitcoin movement’s first film festival, BitFilm in 2015, such as Tomer Kantor, were present, and they continue to film Bitcoin-centric films.
Cointelegraph premiered The Bitcoin Farmer, a short documentary about Bitcoin mining using exclusively renewable energy in Ireland. The film was followed by a panel discussion with Cointelegraph’s director of video, Jackson Dumont; global reporter, Joe Hall; co-founder of Bitcoin Film Fest, Pierre Corbin; and Mark Morton and Vince Giltinan of Scilling Digital Mining.
Pierre Corbin told Cointelegraph that he and co-founder Tomek Kolodziejczuk put together the Bitcoin Film Festival because it’s a “cool idea” for the community. Although the film fest was a valuable means of introducing Polish people to Bitcoin, Pierre explained that Bitcoin “has been very popular here in Poland with Ukrainians coming here because of the war.”
Poland borders Ukraine, with as much as 25% of Poland’s immigrant population Ukrainians. At the beginning of the war, Bitcoin donations increased, and Corbin explains that people on the ground used the decentralized tool:
“The Human Rights Foundation helped them [Ukrainians] transfer their wealth to Bitcoin, help them cross the border here into Poland and then guide them through the process of getting their money back from Bitcoin ATMs because Poland is the country in Europe with the most Bitcoin ATMs.”
Kolodziejczuk set the ball rolling for the world’s first Bitcoin Film Festival in November 2022. He was keen to meet Corbin and show his film, The Great Reset and the Rise of Bitcoin, at a local Bitcoin meetup. However, the idea snowballed. Their meeting and subsequent meetings led to the screening of Bitcoin films from around the world in one of Eastern Europe’s most iconic buildings.
From documentaries shot in El Salvador, which Bond to free, to a snapshot of the impact of Bitcoin on individuals’ lives i Human B, the film festival showcased the latest and most notable film production. Corbin explained the selection process:
“If you choose the right movies that tell the right stories, it will bring people from the outside to understand Bitcoin from the angle we want them to understand.”
A crowdfunding campaign was held through the Bitcoin crowdfunding campaign Geyser Fund, there The Satoshi Mystery by Remi Baillieux won the community voice segment. Meanwhile, Corbin raised satoshis (the smallest denomination of Bitcoin) for his second Bitcoin documentary, The battle for the US dollar.
Related: Movie Review: ‘Human B’ Shows A Personal Journey With Bitcoin
The film festival also brought with it a libertarian conference held in Warsaw on the same weekend. Libertarians advocate minimizing government intervention in daily life, and were some of the earliest adopters of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin Film Festival organizers are considering whether to change the location for the 2024 installment or keep the festival in Warsaw. While bear markets are undoubtedly for building, it seems they are also for filming.
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