Category: Miscellaneous
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I’m on Instagram — without being on Instagram
I have been paying attention to the political leanings of those who operate social networks for a while. That is why I left Facebook something like two years ago, or maybe more. I don’t remember when I signed off exactly. And I left Twitter when Elon Musk bought it — a social network of this…
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The First Official ‘Purpose’ Trailer
Yesterday, we published the first trailer for our film ‘Purpose‘ on YouTube. Very excited. If you want to watch a making-of, you can find it here.
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My Only Comment About AI, the US Elections, Putin & Globalisation in 2024
Below is my latest animation film on MOPALAB. I think it will be the only public comment I will make about all these things. What else is there to say? Update August 27th: I adapted the film to make a YouTube Shorts version also. It’s a bit tighter and that way, maybe, a bit scarier,…
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My Latest Time-Lapse Drawings
In the background — behind all the work that is currently going on for our documentary feature film — my animation channel still doesn’t rest. Here are the latest time-lapse videos I uploaded. Each of them is one scene or drawing from an animation short film that I am working on — the latest is…
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Inventing Indiana Jones
I found a wonderful little treasure — at least for all film buffs: A transcribed conversation from 1978, in which George Lucas is pitching Steven Spielberg and Lawrence Kasdan his ideas for a new movie character and a new movie. The character would later become ‘Indiana Jones’, and the movie ‘Raiders of the Lost Arc’.…
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My latest Animation Film: Italian-German Culture Clash
I couldn’t even say what triggered this — but one day I thought I had to deal with the horrible German notion of putting pineapple on pizza, from an Italian point of view. The result is the latest animation film on my YouTube channel MOPALAB: Interestingly, soon after I had started to work on this…
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When a Japanese Monster Movie Gives Hollywood A Sucker Punch
In May, I wrote about my experience with Apple’s TV+ service, and as part of that, I talked about how horrible I thought their TV show “Monarch — Legacy of Monsters” was. Here is what I had to say about it: At some point I had to stop watching because it was simply too absurd.…
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Incredible Iceland
I just spent two weeks on a trip to Iceland. I drove my electric car to the Northern tip of Denmark and boarded a ferry there. By way of Faroe Islands, the ship needed two days to get to the little port of Seyðisfjörður on the Eastern end of Iceland. (Turns out: there is no…
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The Last Leg of A Filmmaking Journey
I am typing this on the train, en route to Amsterdam, to see my filmmaker friend Martijn Veldhoen. He will help me with the final sound mix of my film ‘Purpose’. Martijn has made many documentary (mostly short) films, many of which have won prizes at film festivals. He is a fairly unique filmmaker in…
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Two Amazing Women On The Express Change Podcast
I’ve been so busy with the post production of the documentary feature film I am currently working on — I didn’t even find the time to write about two inspiring conversations we posted on Express Change! Katja Iversen — “Step It Up” and Katherine Trebeck — “The Clusterfuck Monologues”. Katja is the CEO of the…
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Presenting My New Animation Film Project: ‘MOPALAB’
Visual creativity matters a great deal to me. It always has. I love the drawing style of Hergé. I was also very influenced by the early cover designs of the German youth book series “Die drei ???” by Aiga Rasch. I’ve been drawing all my life, on and off, starting when I was two years…
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Do We Like Our Art And Our Economy Top-Down, or Bottom-Up?
Today, we are launching our first full-length ‘Express Change’-podcast episode — a conversation with Shirley Rodriguez, a New-York-based photographer and filmmaker. There is one idea that Shirley speaks about which reverberates through our entire podcast series: What is the approach to the subject matter? Is it collaborative and open, or is it top-down and closed?…
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New Podcast: ‘Express Change’
Our new podcast “Express Change” (it’s my first!) is going live today, with a short 6-minute teaser episode. You can play it right here: On this page, you’ll find links to all the platforms where the podcast is available — including Spotify, Apple Podcasts and Amazon Music. Marina Gattàs at the Wellbeing Economy Alliance (WEAll)…
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“Causeway” vs. “Dune 2”
I know this is most likely a minority opinion. And some will consider what I’m saying ridiculous. But here it goes: I did not like “Dune 2”. I thought “Causeway” was much better. Bear with me. Last weekend, I watched Causeway — a 2022 drama starring Jennifer Lawrence and Brian Tyree Henry — on Apple…
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The Anguish of Streaming and Apple TV+
Some time last year, I decided to turn my back on streaming services — Netflix and Disney+ in my case. There were two main reasons. Reason one: The quality of the offering was no longer the same. What had drawn me to Netflix back in 2012 (!) was that they allowed me to watch good…
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A New Film Project
This is a teaser. I’m working on something new. And it’s really fun. More to come … watch this space. Update April 11th 2024: Here are the details.
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German Zero Is Hiring: Managing Director
We are currently looking for a new person to strengthen the full-time team’s management in German Zero’s Berlin headquarter office. We want to build a larger team to run operations overall. A particular focus is on developing the organisation’s fundraising, policy development and communications activities. There’s a job offer on SmartRecruiters.com which you can find…
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Learning Adobe Audition with Mike Russell
When we started working on EXPRESS CHANGE, I soon realised that Apple’s native GarageBand software was not going to be good enough for the purposes of this project. I have done a bit of music home recording with GarageBand over the years, and it does some things very well — but it’s also terribly frustrating…
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Charming A Crowd Into Attention
In January 24th, we had the chance to do a vollehalle gig at SID — “Stadtwerke Impact Day” in the northern German town of Lübeck (‘Stadtwerk’ is a nicely concise German term for ‘municipal energy company’. We can do short and sweet, who would’ve thought?!) SID is designed to unite forward-looking people in the municipal…
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A Podcast Born From A YouTube Failure
The origin story of ‘Express Change’ — the podcast which I am currently working on and which will launch in early spring of 2024 — began with a failed attempt at creating a YouTube channel. For quite some time, I had wanted to build a media project of my own that I could run without…