ElPais.com " Tecnología Latin American Documentaries 'on-line'" On Monday, a cultural promotion team launched in Buenos Aires the Docfera web site, a pioneering platform which will give the public access to the most important digital archive in the world of Latin American documentaries. Andrea Hirsch, who directs the team, explained that the platform aims to preserve, disseminate and distribute via Internet the "enormous wealth of Latin American documentaries" in the most diverse digital formats, with subtitles and with the highest possible quality. It will also help filmmakers to promote their work and collect on-line their royalties, which will be protected by the most advanced systems of encryption designed by a team of specialists, she said. Hirsch, the daughter of Paul Hirsch, the creator of various foundations, including Antorchas in Argentina, Vitae in Brazil and Andes in Chile, said that the "principal audience" for Docfera will be universities and schools from around the world, and it has already received the support of various prestigious institutions of higher education. She stressed that the site boasts some novel formats used to search the archive for different contents, "one is totally rational and precise while the other is intuitive and user-friendly." With the "user-friendly search" format Docfera hopes to revolutionise the system used to disseminate documentaries "targetting younger users, who are more accustomed to surfing the internet in a less specific way, on the basis of key topics and ideas, without knowing exactly what they might come across," she remarked. Docfera also includes a module to allow for the organisation of "virtual" film festivals in which the members of the jury may be in different places but they can still watch, discuss, comment and vote on the various competing films. Andrea Hirsch explained that the idea behind the On-Line Festival module is to organise competitions "with ever more prestigious figures who due to problems of timing, costs and other commitments often find it impossible to travel to the different places where these events are held." She claimed that filmmakers now have "a new channel through which to disseminate their work" and "will be able to sell their documentaries securely with copyright protection" under the DRM (Digital Rights Management) protocol, which sets the levels of reproduction and copying permitted for each work, in accordance with the purchase decisions made by users. http://www.elpais.com/articulo/internacional/Documentaries