Valkaama - the new Open Source movie

… and no worries, the movie is not about Open Source, but is released following the same principles than Open Source software. Beside the actual movie also all of its sources (like raw material of 173 GB in size, the script etc.) are freely available.

The title Valkaama is a composition of the Finnish words “valkama” (home) and “kaamos” (polar night). In a bit more than one and a half hours the director Tim Baumann tells the story of two very contrary characters that hook together not quite by accident to finally reach their ultimate destiny in Lapland. The drama is based on the novel “Valkama” written by Hendrik Behnisch.

The official trailer is embedded at the end of this post, you can watch the full movie directly at the homepage of Valkaama or download it via BitTorrent.

I really like it … one minor thing to criticize could be the audio of the voices, but as the movie is published under the Creative Commons BY-SA license with all sources at hand, I am pretty sure that we could spot an improved version soon. In case you also like the movie, you can make a donation via the homepage or buy the official DVD to support the project.

For the German speaking readers there is also an interview with the director and producer Tim Baumann over at netzpolitik.org. Furthermore Tim wrote his diploma thesis “Chancen von Open Source Software Geschäftsmodellen und Entwicklungsansätzen in der Filmindustrie” about the Open Source approach in the film industries. According to the film it should be really worth reading it. Valkaama was supported by VEB Film Leipzig who are producing and publishing their movies after a similar Open Source approach.

Update (2010/02/01): Over at jorni.de is a detailed review of the movie in German: “Valkaama-Review: Poesie in filmischer (Open-Source-) Form”.