Since 2009 the CPH:LAB has established itself as a highly acknowledged, ambitious and yet playful laboratory-style talent scheme showing great results. The lab is conceived as an incubator for documentary projects that seek to explore the potential of digital interactive technologies and advance new visions of what a documentary can be in a digital age. It offers a space for experimentation and collaboration in creative, cross-disciplinary partnerships across film, the creative arts, science, technology and social entrepreneurship.

CPH:LAB track record

Since its conception, CPH:LAB has selected and welcomed on average 9 projects each year from different corners of the world that deal with various thematics and focus on different aspects of the world we live in. Many of these projects have been developed at CPH:LAB, then premiered in international festivals such as at Sundance Film Festival (Breathe and Prison X Breathe and Prison X),  London Film Festival (Captured) and at IDFA (nerd_funk). Non-Aligned Newsreels have been selected for Berlin Biennial 2022 and the Oceanic Feeling was part of the ULTRAMARIN – an Immersive Exhibition of VRHAM! and at the Venice Film Festival. 

Thanks to the experimental nature of the LAB projects many of them found their place in art and cultural festivals, such as the Pathogen of War that was selected for first public preview at Battersea Arts Centre, as part of Shubbak, the UK’s largest festival of contemporary Arab culture. Local Binaries is shortlisted for the VR Art Prize by Contemporary Arts Alliance (CAA) Berlin, is the first art prize for virtual reality in the field of visual arts with an institutional exhibition in Germany. 

The feedback of the different editions of CPH:LAB is overwhelmingly positive with the vast majority of the participants declaring that the programme was very relevant and a good opportunity to enlarge their network of contacts as well as improve their own professional skills and competences and acquire new ones.