Festival Fill Airwaves With Launches, Bombshell Announcements

HOLLYWOOD, Calif., March 23 -- On the eve of the 72nd Academy Awards, The Yahoo! Internet Life Online Film Festival opens in Los Angeles at the Standard and Chateau Marmont Hotels, with the films screening at the Director's Guild of America. The two-day event features more than 30 exhibitors, six features, more than a dozen shorts, six panels, two keynote addresses, parties, and the world premiere of Mike Figgis' latest film TIMECODE.

"We're delighted to see the whole event come together after such lengthy and exhaustive planning," said YIL's Online Film Festival Director Jesse Jacobs. "We'd like to acknowledge the stupendous efforts of everyone that has contributed to the inaugural Online Film Festival's anticipated success. We're looking to deliver a home run for exhibitors, sponsors, panelists, participants, and, above all, for the filmmakers. The filmmakers represent the vision of this medium and this festival."

The Festival has been a sellout across the board. All exhibit space, sponsorships and credentials sold out in the weeks running up to the Festival. This left anguished staffers complaining their jobs were on the line to get their bosses passes, and enterprising others coining "web press outlets" in order to win media credentials. "We're starting to hear some pretty colorful stories," says B|W|R's Catherine Shin. "I guess it's a measure of how popular this thing is. How come they never call us for our other events?"

The keenest competition, however, was for the coveted spots on the Festival programming schedule. The finalists in Festival Program Director Heather Kellogg's exhaustive search for films yielded over 400 entries. "We chose the features because of the ways they illustrate filmmaker opportunities on the Internet," Kellogg explains. "On one level or another, the web helped to bring these features to life and to audiences: whether as subject matter, aesthetic inspiration, or a tool to help produce, promote, or distribute films."

For the shorts, a worldwide screening audience on Yahoo! Movies (http://movies.yahoo.com/onlinefilmfestival) voted to select finalists from an initial 24 shorts (a combination of live-action and animated shorts). From these 24, the top six live-action shorts and top 6 animated films won the ability to be screened live at the DGA. According to Kellogg, "there were several ties, so 7 live-action shorts and 8 animations had to be fit into the program." The finalists are still available for viewing online at Yahoo! Movies until the live screening component of the festival is completed. OFF's panels carry forward the vision of the programming, dealing principally with how the Internet is affective all aspects of filmmaking and distribution. They feature Bringing Hollywood to the Web (2 panels), Taking a Feature to the Net, Incubating Online Entertainment Companies, Films Reborn on the Web, and Digital Storytelling. The panels feature a cross section of the digital filmmaking universe, such as IFilm's Kevin Wendle, AtomFilms' Mika Salmi, 's Michael Roberts, Waterview Partners' Frank Biondi, Amazon.com's Diane Zoi, and directors Sam Sokolow, Doug Liman and Mike Figgis, among others.

A number of the 30 registered exhibitors packing the bungalows at the Chateau Marmont and poolside suites at the Standard -- so many that journalists have begun to complain about the press release volume -- are taking advantage of the feeding frenzy. Hitplay Media -- a targeted streaming video network -- will launch its online programming service Hitplay.com with Jim Belushi, Trashy Lingerie and Alaye calendar models, MP3 recording artist Kathy Fisher, and a parachutist who -- weather permitting -- will make a surprise dive into the Standard pool from more than a thousand feet in the air. Sightsound.com, which wrapped production yesterday on QUANTUM PROJECT -- the world's first film produced specifically for Internet distribution -- has rushed a teaser trailer through production in time to screen before TIMECODE. Still others have announcements under wraps.

"The confluence of the Internet and filmmaking has finally reached critical mass," Jacobs concludes. Indeed, Monday's Wall Street Journal contained a special section on Entertainment and Technology that featured the cover line "The Industries Converge at Last." "We're glad to be at the right place at the right time."

SCREENING SCHEDULE

SCREENING #1 March 22, 11am-1pm DGA Theatre #2 Short: My Ding-A-Ling by Brad Abelson (Quality Filmed Entertainment) Feature: Foreign Correspondents, Mark Tapio Kines (Greenstem Productions)

SCREENING #2 March 22, 1-3pm DGA Theatre #2 Short: Descent, by Kevin Souls (EYESOREVisuals) Feature: Homepage, Doug Block (A Copacetic Pictures production in association with HBO and ZDF-Arte)

SCREENING #3 March 22, 4:30-6:30pm DGA Theatre #2 Short: Men Named Milo, Women Named Greta (Atom Films) Feature: The Sadness of Sex, by Rupert Wainwright (Skyvision Partners)

World Premiere March 22, 7-9pm DGA Theatre #1 Feature: TIMECODE, by Mike Figgis (Sony Screen Gems)

SCREENING #4 March 23, 10am-noon DGA Theatre #2 Short: The Sick Sense, by Bill McNally (Night Owl Films) Feature: The Definite Maybe, by Sam Sokolow and Rob Rollins Lobl (A SokoLobl Film)

SCREENING #5 March 23, 1:00-3:30pm "The Next Wave of Entertainment: A Series of Web Premieres"

Web premieres, a special forum, will feature the newest efforts and cutting edge technology by some of the web's most innovative companies and individuals: Steven Bratter's HDTV, "Seven & A Match;" Honkworm International; Shockwave; Wild Brain; Atom Films; Crushed Planet; and John Pierson's "Split Screen." The special presentations will also include recently Oscar nominated animation short "Humdrum" by Peter Peake and Oscar nominated live-action short "Killing Joe" by Mehdi Norowzian and Steve Wax, both of which are promoted and distributed by Atom Films.

Order of Presentations:

"7 & A Match" by Steven Bratter (HDTV) Wild Brain Shockwave Atom Films Crushed Planet Split Screen/Submarine Honkworm

SCREENING #6 March 23, 4:00-5:30pm DGA Theatre #2 SHORTS SCREENINGS

More, by Mark Osborne (A Bad Clams Production) Protest, by Steve.D.Katz (Pitch Inc.) Billy Jones, by Christopher Bell (Quality Filmed Entertainment, IFILM) MuM, by Nicolas Peterson (Atom Films) Land of Abusement, by Mike Wellins (Level13.com) Vedma, by Alison Schulnik (Student Film for Cal Arts) Babie, by Jonathan Michals Race Speedster, by Scott Rosann (Scarry Little Town) Fishbar #10: The Delectable Peanut, by Janet Galore (Honkworm) Sunday's Game, Gene Laufenberg

SCREENING #7 March 23, 6:00-8:00pm DGA Theatre #2 Short: I Still Miss Someone, by John Lloyd Miller (AV SQUAD) Feature: From There to Here, by Charles Herman Wurmfeld

The festival is generously sponsored by Sony, Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com, BeautyJungle.com, OnStream, BigStar.com, Yack.com, Honkworm, The New York Times, The Hollywood Reporter, Filmmaker Magazine, Sundance Channel, Yahoo! Movies, Food.com, and Skyy Vodka.