A diverse selection of DW documentaries, specials and series won numerous awards at the 15^th World Media Festival in Hamburg this past week. Organized by Intermedia, this year’s festival drew 700 entries from 35 countries.

Winning a gold intermedia-globe in the documentary-magazine format category was PopXport Special, a 10-part production from DW’s popular music show that showcases some of Germany’s most successful recording artists. The Global Ideas web-documentary, Serengeti- Toward an uncertain future, won a gold award in the E-Learning and Education category and the 10-part series, Tracing the past: German-Jewish cultural heritage,  won gold in the Documentaries-Other category. The 28-part Euromaxx series, Europe 28 , which takes a look at all 28 capital cities of the EU,  won a gold award in the documentaries-destinations category as did the music documentary, The Highest Level , in the documentaries-arts category.

Winning a silver intermedia-globe award was the music documentary, The Colón Ring- Wagner in Buenos Aires, in the Documentaries-Arts category and a production from Kino- The German Film Magazine  that explores German film in Brazil and the relationship between the two countries won silver in the documentaries-magazine format category. A report from People and Politics was also awarded silver in the News-Documentary category. It tells the story of children who were abducted by the Nazis in Eastern Europe who as adults are searching for their roots.

The performance at the 2014 World Media Festival in Hamburg comes a few weeks after many DW productions won awards at festivals in Las Vegas and Houston.

On May 15, the first ever interactive live debate between candidates competing for the EU’s top position will be televised, streamed and broadcast across Europe and the world. DW is one of only two international broadcasters that will televise the event to global audiences.  The Eurovision Debate will allow European voters to ask direct questions via social media to the candidates for President of the European Commission.  It is also the first debate where each of the five major candidates will be present.

With DW, audiences all over the world can directly experience European democracy and understand how this oft-perplexing system functions from the inside.  DW has also created a special EU election web platform packed with multimedia content covering every angle of the elections. Issues include an expert discussion on lobbyism in the EU or a report on the effects of the Euro crisis.

The 2014 European elections are the first where the president of the Commission will come from the parliamentary party which receives the most votes, thus for the first time including the European electorate in deciding who will be in charge of the EU’s most powerful office. DW will continue to do its part in covering the elections while helping people all over the world understand how the EU operates and what issues are valued by Europeans.

The EU parliamentary elections run from May 22 to 25, the Eurovision Debate will be televised live on May 15 at 20:00 UTC.

 

 

Europe

The compact online version of DW’s Russian-language news program Geofaktor has been a big success since it was launched in mid-March. The 13^th broadcast alone was watched 430,000 times. Almost all of the video content was accessed via DW’s online Russian-language media center. The majority of viewers were directed there via a banner-ad campaign on the popular Russian news website, news.mail.ru. On YouTube, Geofaktor episodes were accessed an additional 50,000 times during the second half of March.

The ongoing geo-political tensions in Ukraine have created a high demand for unbiased news coverage delivered in Russian. This is made clear by the burgeoning rise in page visits on DW Russian. The number rose by nearly 4 million visits between February and March 2014. A large amount of that traffic came via DW’s Ukrainian online partner, ukr.net, as well as the Russian search engine, Rambler.ru. Also In March, visits to DW Ukrainan doubled from 1 to 2.2 million, with most of that traffic coming via ukr.net.

North America

After a series of extensive and lengthy negotiations, a new transmission contract has been successfully arranged between DW and Canada’s largest cable provider, Rogers Cable. Rogers will now carry the English-language flagship channel, DW, and the German-language channel, DW (Amerika). Previously, only DW had been offered as a part of the English news package. Starting at the end of May, DW (Amerika) will be offered à la carte as a single subscription channel. Rogers brings DW’s quality programming to a large audience of political and business leaders with a coverage area that includes Canada’s capital Ottawa and its largest city, Toronto.

South America

The Peruvian online news portal, Peru.com, is a new DW partner and will regularly include full articles from DW. The website belongs to the El Comercio group, which occupies 75 percent of the market share in Peruvian print media. A tracking code developed by DW’s market and media research will count how often DW articles are accessed.

 

 

 

Every year in February a diverse collection of stars, producers and film enthusiasts from around the world flock to Germany’s capital of culture for the Berlinale film festival. The Berlinale is the world’s largest publically attended film festival and this year with over 400 films on the program, it may be hard to decide where to look first. Before you travel to Berlin, get some background and insight from DW and you’ll know where to enjoy the show.

DW is bringing the 64^th Berlinale to a global audience in multiple languages including Spanish, Farsi, Turkish and Portuguese for Brazil. On television the festival is being covered daily on Journal  in all languages and on every channel. Berlinale highlights from DW’s TV-magazines include an insightful overview from Arts 21 of what’s trending at this year’s festival and a look from Euromaxx at what makes Germany attractive for filmmakers.Three young DW trainees also produced a special feature showcasing 300 young filmmakers from around world with film at this year’s Berlinale. Check out the highlights from the project here.  You can find more of DW’s Berlinale coverage on dw.de and in the Media Center.

 

 

 

Sochi has already gotten some bad press, with many wondering if this edition will be tarnished. DW will be going in-depth to provide you a complete view of what is going on and what powers are at play. But don’t forget the athletes and the sports. DW is covering the 2014 Winter Olympic Games like never before with a combination of television and multimedia features that will take international audiences inside the action and behind the scenes with videos and commentary from Sochi. DW Sports will also cover German athletes who are in the spotlight as favorites on the world stage. Can the young skier Eric Frenzel win his first gold medal, after winning the Bronze in Vancouver? Will champion luger Felix Loch continue to dominate the track or be upset by the competition?

DW will keep you constantly updated online with multimedia websites  in English, German, Spanish and Arabic. Additionally for audiences in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan DW has produced special olympic websites in Bengali, Urdu, Dari and Pashto. DW also will be bringing together all of the news and results everyday with TV reports alongside in-depth specials that explore the wider social, cultural  and technological issues surrounding the Olympics on Euromaxx and Tomorrow Today.