Last night, I had the great honor of dining with Sir Ben Kingsley and Ben Medina, director of Nana, one of 10 short films in competition in the inaugural MyFestival online film competition at this year's SIFF. http://myfestival.siff.net
It was a double Ben night for me. Volterra, the restaurant was awesome, the food fabulous and the Durham wine provided by artist and winemaker Eric was plentiful and incredible. SIFF top brass was in attendance and looked wonderfully relaxed considering they are working 24/7 right now and for the next 3 weeks to come.
This Year's SIFF feels very different to me. There's something in the air. Perhaps because the art house is dying and the film festival is replacing it hence there is a lot more interest in independent film. When we ask our users do you want movies with big stars or good stories - choose one? Hands down it's always stories.
I am tired from launching MyFestival but I have never been happier. in just 72 hours of being live we are approaching 10,000 views. Surprisingly the features are getting more play than the shorts. People are voting and clearly telling others to come and watch. Filmmaker, Ben Medina made my day when he told me that he found IndieFlix to be incredibly customer service oriented. Mike Williams, Head of Filmmaker Relations and I care so much about these filmmakers and are there to support them every step of the way. It took a lot of courage for filmmakers to decide to participate in MyFestival. They had to disregard the nay sayers, agents and reps and follow their hearts recognizing that this is the wave of the future. The MyFestival exhibition is the ultimate test screening and audience building opportunity. We provide every filmmaker with the collected demographic data and comments so they can focus their marketing efforts effectively. We will prove that this will better their chances for meaningful distribution whether it's Hollywood or DIY.
This is only the beginning, it's time for the audience to have a voice in what plays in our theaters from the festival to the multiplex. We at IndieFlix have some pretty big ideas on how this can work and this testing ground has already proved to be quite fertile. Anyway, I got a little off track considering I started this post about meeting 2 very important Ben's.
Scilla
Filmmaker, CEO & Co-Founder IndieFlix.com
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