NEW YORK - Film festivals operate on a cabalistic trickle-down theory - a narrow class of critics, pampered stars, and jet-setting hangers-on get first dibs, while the rest of us have to wait until the studios decide when the public is ready to handle the avant-garde (which is sometimes never, as in the case of the outré Lolita).
In a somewhat quixotic effort to kick the lift tickets and sunglasses out of the festival circuit, RealNetworks, Toshiba, and Netly News have raised the curtain on their Reel Time Film Festival, a week-long free-for-all of 15 selected short films open for the browsing public.
With an online film festival, "you don't have to pay to fly to Cannes, and you don't have to be in the industry loop about what film you need to see," says director Kevin Thomason, whose 3-minute animated short The Green Man is playing in the festival. As Thomason says, the Net can make festivals more accessible - and dramatically cheaper. Like many young filmmakers, when Thomason had his film screened last year at the Imaginary Film Festival in Monaco, he wanted to go but couldn't afford it.
In synch with the Reel Time Film Festival's less pretentious, technological twist, the winners won't get a cash prize, but DVD players and videos from Warner Home Video, a division of Netly's parent company, Time Warner. Though the winners will be judged by producer Gill Holland (of recent Sundance-darling Hurricane Streets fame), avant-garde director Amos Poe (Frogs and Snakes), and documentary filmmaker Michel Negroponte (Jupiter's Wife), general users will be able to vote for the Best of Festival in four categories: narrative, animation, documentary, and experimental. Mixing business with aesthetic pleasure, viewers must download RealNetworks' new 5.0 streaming video player to see the films.
Though the festival wisely features only short films (between three and 10 minutes), the usual complaints - connection speed and screen size - frustrate some of the directors. "Seeing a postage-sized movie doesn't get your blood boiling," says Michael Dougherty, an animator at Nickelodeon who directed the 3-minute short Season's Greetings. "I'm on a T1 which is shared across the building, and I try to download a clip and its slow and choppy."
But given the constraints, online film festivals may drive a certain evolution in aesthetics toward simpler, more montage-oriented animated films which don't have to produce realistic-quality photography, says Scott Kaplan, the organizer of the festival. Because of the choppiness of some of the animation, Kaplan adds, the Net "actually makes it seems smoother."
For critics, the festival - and its distribution format - bodes well for the future of short film. "Short films are usually considered just a calling card - directors see it as a means to an end," says Holland. But that may be changing as the film format finds a home online, says Jeremiah Newton, who co-founded the Shorts International Film Festival which concluded two weeks ago in New York. "A lot of short films are relegated to festival sidebars or take place on [New York's] Avenue C, where people won't go," Newton says.
Festivals like the Reel Time Film Festival that aren't designed simply for the film industry help people adjust to the format by "bringing short films into their homes," adds Newton. "The American attention span is so short anyway - it's like Indian restaurants or antique stores: The more festivals, the merrier."
