Yahoo/Internet Life Online Film Festival
by Sharon
Smith-Holley
Over two thousand net-heads, filmmakers, celebrities, agents and publicists celebrated the convergence of film and the Internet at the first annual Yahoo/Internet Life Magazine Online Film Festival at two L.A. hotels on March 22nd and 23rd. Participants included: Amazon.com, AtomFilms, BigStar.com, IFilm, IMDb.com, Mandalay, Pop.com, Reel.com, Shockwave, SightSound.com and many others. Speakers included Mike Figgis, Peter Guber, Kurt Andersen, and Frank Biondi. The festival included the world premiere of Mike Figgis’ Time Code.
In his keynote address, Roger Ebert said, "Hollywood and the Internet are on a collision course. The Internet will survive, and so will those in Hollywood who understand it. But the day of the unwired mogul is over. The movie industry has the same relationship to the Internet today that it had to talkies in the 1920s: plug in or quit."
Several announcements were made during the Festival, including:
- Atomfilms.com announced a
production and distribution partnership with Propaganda
Films.
- Reelshort.com announced an equity
investment by Universal Pictures, who will help Reelshort
showcase new short films.
- 21st Century Vox Online Film
Studios announced a 3-picture deal with New York's
Bigel-Mailer Films.
- Shockwave announced a development
and production deal for animated Internet programming
with filmmaker David Lynch.
- Digital film distributor Sight-Sound.com announced completion of principal photography on 'Quantum Project', the world's first film produced specifically for Internet distribution. They premiered the trailer for the $3 million picture, which stars Stephen Dorff, Fay Masterson and John Cleese.
| ||||||
| ||||||
Reprinted from
The Motion Picture Editors Guild Magazine
Vol. 21, No. 3 - MayJune 2000
Guild Home | Magazine Home | Top of Page
Copyright © 2000, All Rights Reserved by The Motion Picture Editors Guild, IATSE Local 700