First German E-Book Award goes to Switzerland

In the e-book apps category, the startup from Zurich came out on top against well-known publishers from Germany, Austria and Switzerland. The video book is a co-production with Swiss television SRF.

Article from Werbewoche 15/2014 about Docmine

The German E-Book Awards were presented for the first time at the Frankfurt Book Fair on Wednesday. A high-caliber jury had to choose the best work of the past 12 months in the categories "e-books" and "e-book apps". The video book "Carl Lutz - The Forgotten Hero" was honored in the "E-Book Apps" category. This video book tells the story of the Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz, who saved more than 50,000 Jews from the Holocaust in Budapest. The initiator of the award, Robert Goldschmidt, explained the jury's decision by stating that this videobook achieves digital storytelling at the highest level by interweaving textual and cinematic description with other content elements. Videobooks are offered as apps for tablets and are available from the Apple App Store or Google Play.

Originally, the award-winning company Docmine is a film production. Under the direction of Daniel von Aarburg, Docmine also produced a documentary in parallel to the publication of the video book, which was recently broadcast on Swiss television and presented at the Zurich Film Festival. "Perhaps it is indicative of the upheaval in the publishing industry that we, of all people, were able to win this award as an original film production," says Docmine CEO Patrick M. Müller. "Because the digitalization of content enables new narrative forms where the boundaries between the individual media become blurred." The documentary about Carl Lutz was co-produced by Swiss Television, and SRG provided financial support for the project as part of the "Pacte Multimedia" funding program.

The basis for the videobook was a detailed script about Carl Lutz's life story by director Daniel von Aarburg as well as all the raw material that was created during the filming of the documentary. "Thanks to the video book, I had the opportunity to deepen complex contexts using other media such as texts and interactive graphics," explains von Aarburg. "Above all, I was able to include statements from contemporary witnesses in the video book, which I had to leave out due to the film drama. That was very important to me".

The individual media in the video book - video sequences, original recordings, interactive graphics and texts - were brought together into a digital narrative strand by the team at Docmine's second branch in Munich under the creative direction of Robin Burgauer. "Lutz left behind an extensive archive of self-shot films and aesthetic photographs from his time in Budapest. We therefore attached particular importance to a visual narrative that would also correspond to Lutz's own style and aesthetic," says Burgauer.

According to the press release, the production company Docmine is also pleased that Apple has currently included the videobook about Carl Lutz in the "Best New Apps" category in the German-language iTunes stores. Docmine has previously produced the videobooks for the SRG series "Die Schweizer" and also supports a number of cultural institutions such as the Goethe Institute and large companies in the creation of digital publications. Tom Talent Holding, owned by Swiss media entrepreneur Thomas Sterchi (founder of Jobs.ch), holds half of Docmine.