Film as educational tool

Almost 1 month ago I posted an article about our latest short documentary film Before the Oil that I made with my friend and photographer Martijn Heemstra in Norway. A story by Odd Kvinen, a very wise man running a husky farm deep in the mountains in Norway. Educating about our energy transition, respect for nature and choices we will have to make.

3 November, 3:15 PM New York, live prèmiere

Today at 3:15 PM New York time the film will première live at the Big Apple Film Festival in New York (tickets available here) and both live and online screenings at film festivals in Europe will follow shortly. Very happy and proud of course on our Dutch-Norwegian team that made this film possible! But also very interesting to see this happening.

Visual learning

In addition to my day-to-day role as energy ecosystems developer at NVNOM I also make short documentary films about sustainability and energy transition at Hansa Green Tour. Together with Frans Adema and Martijn Heemstra we made several documentaries of the events and (government) delegations that we organized around those topics since 2011, with a strong focus on Scandinavia and Iceland (the Nordics). But never with the intention to make a film production to go to film festivals. So I am not new to film, but I am eager to learn how film can be used for visual learning, how film can be used as an educational tool.

I believe that film is the medium of our time to reach both the young and older generations, as we all (including me) have become more or less attached to our mobile devices every single day. Especially for the young generation digital content, videos and film are the most engaging media for education. Much more interesting than old school boring Powerpoint or Excel sheet presentations.

That is why I wanted to make this film Before the Oil. A cinematic short documentary film with an important educational message, something that touches you and that makes you think. A film with a message close to my heart. An experiment to see and learn how film festivals would respond to it and to test what film as an educational tool can do.

An exciting new adventure to dive into the world of film festivals and film as a visual learning tool. Let's kick it off with going live today at 3:15 PM in New York at the Big Apple Film Festival!