Synopsis

Introducing the Fediverse: a New Era of Social Media is a 4-minute video explainer about the Fediverse, a galaxy of interconnected, free, open-source social networks.

Watch now to discover a whole new world of social media, where privacy is respected, users are empowered, and Big Tech has no say.

Credits

Director: Elena Rossini
Writing: Elena Rossini & Sam Aaberg
Cinematography: Sam Aaberg & Riyen Patel
Camera operator: Riyen Patel
Editing & motion graphics: Elena Rossini

Filmmakers Bios

a photo showing three people sitting on a couch in front of a bookcase: a man with a beard wearing a black blazer, a woman with long dark hair and a striped shirt holding a clapper and a man with glasses wearing a red sweatshirt

From left to right: Riyen Patel, Elena Rossini and Samuel Aaberg

Riyen Patel

Cinematographer & camera operator

Riyen Patel is a film student specializing in visual storytelling, cinematography, and editing. He has worked on a variety of short films and creative projects, including narrative pieces, documentaries, stop-motion animations, and daily vlogs (on YouTube). He is also skilled in drone operation and proficient with post-production tools like Adobe Lightroom and DaVinci Resolve. Riyen’s interests include blending traditional practices with modern technology to create work that is both emotionally engaging and visually striking.

Follow Riyen on Pixelfed

Elena Rossini

Director, editor, writer, VFX artist

Elena Rossini is an Italian filmmaker, photographer and activist. Rossini’s work focuses on issues of social justice, media literacy and digital literacy. Her most notable film is the critically acclaimed documentary The Illusionists, about the globalization of beauty ideals, which Rossini shot in eight countries, across four continents. The film has been featured in Vogue Italy, New York Magazine, NPR, FOX and NBC Baltimore, amongst others. Rossini has since turned her attention to the world of ethical social media and started a blog about the Fediverse – the Future is Federated – in June 2024.

Follow Elena on Mastodon

Samuel Aaberg

Cinematographer & co-writer

Samuel Aaberg is a Chicago-based filmmaker who specializes in directing, casting, and lighting. He is the founder and president of Directors for Actors, a scene study program that hosts weekly rehearsals featuring local talent. Samuel has worked for Reparations Media as a freelance director, Juneteenth Productions as a documentary researcher, and American High Productions as a script development & social media intern. As a student, he has participated in 40+ film productions at DePaul University.

Follow Sam on Mastodon

“Introducing the Fediverse” shareable clips

The ultimate goal of this video is to introduce the Fediverse to people not familiar with it.

With that target in mind, we have created a series of shorter clips optimized for social media sharing; everything is under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike) – feel free to download and share widely.

“Introducing the Fediverse” video locations

You can find our video (and grab its embed code) on the following platforms:

Clips for Social Media

the button opens a link in a new window – a NextCloud page – where you could select which files you want to download and re-use

Subtitles

Special thanks to all the wonderful volunteers who helped translate the video in multiple languages:

Marcel Costa for the Catalan translation
Pen-Yuan Hsing for the Traditional Chinese translation
Jan Dytrych for the Czech translation
Fritjof for the Danish translation
Erik Kemp for the Dutch translation
sknob for help with the French translation
Severin for the German translation
Claudio for help with the Italian translation
Hong Minhee for the Korean translation
Adrian Janiak for the Polish translation
Tarcísio Surdi for the Portuguese Brazilian translation
Daniel Casanueva for the Spanish translation
Jan Ainali for the Swedish translation