"Film" doesn't mean what it used
to. While it may still be, in the words of Jean-Luc Godard, "truth
at 24 frames per second" audiences no longer need to pay $8
to see the truth. Movies can be digital, cost less to make than
a Ford Taurus (as we all learned from The Blair Witch), and
they can be screened on your very own computer. With this changing
technology, the film festival circuit was quick to respond. In fact,
many festivals brought the circuit right to our desktops, with several
new online fests sprouting around the world, from Yahoo
Online in Los Angeles to Indiekino
in Korea.

These
fests marched onto the circuit with the battle cry of democracy,
claiming their events "open to everyone", or in the words
of Neo Pangea, "it's time
for a revolution." Instead of the Cannes' ten tier hierarchy
for press badges, everyone could attend these festivals. Juries
were replaced by online voters; plane tickets and entry fees were
replaced by modems or cable.

The
fest year logged onto the Internet spirit in January with the launch
of the International
Festival of Internet Films (FIFI, France) at Imagina with a
special Prix FIFI/Imagina. For their second annual event three months
later, the fest sponsored an online vote for the best animated film
and screened works created for the Internet, under the condition
that each work had a url address. All of the nine visual works were
made with Macromedia Flash software. While this started the flames,
the real trailblazer for
this new genre of festival-making was the yahoo!
Online film fest in March. Widely praised is for its pioneering
efforts -- after all, it was the first and the most logical choice
to host such a web gathering -- some criticized it for not living
up to its hype. To be fair, the two-day event was billed as a "real-world
exploration of online and offline filmmaking," and to this
extent, yahoo! delivered. However, some found the festival to be
more of a schmmoze-fest between studio and Internet executives.
With only one film, though a revolutionary one, screened (Mike Figgis's
fully-digital Timecode)
perhaps the fest should have been called a screening. Or at least
a film meeting.

Philadelphia
Festival of World Cinema, which ran from April to May, featured
an Internet festival program with 20 interactive creations for the
Internet from eight countries. Indiekino
in Korea ran from August through September and screened all 96 films
from 22 countries uniquely at the Indiekino site. This month brought
the Cine
Roma (Italy) Film Festival, which screened films during a period
of seven days on their website.

Of
course, this new festival spirit brought new takes on the format.
Instead of the traditional, ten-day festival frenzy, some lasted
months into the year. Consider Resfest,
which began in the summer and only finished up this December, in
Tokyo. Organized by the RES Media group, the fest screens films
that have been created via digital means. It has so far visited
cities around the world, including London and San Francisco, usually
holding a conference or a panel discussion in conjunction with its
screenings in that city. While the films are still screened in a
traditional venue, those from "Net Cinema" (films created
specifically for the Internet) have made their way on online sites.

The
big winners in this new domain were short filmmakers, who, after
years of struggling to get into fests (with very little hopes of
distribution beyond) found themselves with more and more festival
outlets to display their product. The concept of online festivals
also meant that more distinguished
festivals, like Sundance, Deauville, and Stockholm
(i festival) who all launched e-versions of their fest to accomodate
the online demand for coverage. FilmFestivals.com hosted an online
gallery for short filmmakers in conjunction with the Deauville Film
Festival.

The
question now, of course, is will it last? Will online fests go the
way of minitel? Will they keep their niche on the net? It seems
unlikely that one will overtake Sundance or Cannes any time soon,
but we certainly haven't seen the end of these online smorgasbords.