Sundance sets on mobile short films

Robert Redford's Sundance Institute, a longtime champion of American independent filmmaking, today announced it will team with wireless trade group The GSM Association to launch the Sundance Film Festival: Global Short Film Project, an initiative spotlighting three-to-five minute short films made exclusively for screening on mobile handsets. Sundance has so far commissioned five shorts from independent filmmakers including Jonathan Dayton & Valerie Faris (Little Miss Sunshine), Justin Lin (Better Luck Tomorrow) and Maria Maggenti (Puccini for Beginners); the shorts will premiere on opening day of the annual 3GSM World Congress in Barcelona in February 2007.

"Cell phones are fast becoming the 'fourth screen' medium, after television, cinema and computers," said Redford, Sundance's president and founder, in a prepared statement. "We feel this experiment embodies fully our quarter-century dedication to exploring new platforms to support wider distribution of independent voices in filmmaking."

This is huge news--the Sundance imprimatur is virtually synonymous with Amerindie film in the collective mindset of mainstream viewers, and its entrance into original mobile content lends the market a new sense of legitimacy and creative purpose. In other words, this is content film snobs will actually pay to download.

For more on Sundance's Global Short Film Project:
- view this release

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