Movie Lovers: Keep Up With Online Film Fests
By Sandie Angulo Chen (from Clever Girls Collective) on October 21, 2011
Let's face it. Unless you're a filmmaker or a luckily employed movie critic, flying around the world to attend the Sundance, Tribeca, Cannes, Venice and Toronto film festivals is expensive and unfeasible. Fortunately for the rest of us, some of the most prestigious film festivals have excellent websites where audiences can keep up with independent shorts, documentaries, and feature films. And there are several online "festivals" where viewers can even watch and vote for the best submissions. Here are a few of our favorites. 
Film Fights: One of the most entertaining and accessible film sites is an ongoing "festival" where filmmakers from around the world compete by making movies according to a given genre, title and length prompt. Anyone can upload a short film within the submission period, and then audiences vote and review their favorites, until one is declared that "Film Fight's" winner.
Independent Lens: PBS' groundbreaking series calls itself "A film festival for your living room," and they're not far off the mark. Impeccably curated, the series showcases new documentaries and dramas that aren't just entertaining, they're life changing. Now in its 10th season, the site features full episodes and trailers of upcoming films covering everything from the Chicano movement to American Sign Language poetry jams to the history of rights for the disabled.
The mecca of independent filmmaking is straight out of Park City, Utah, where founder Robert Redford has created a well-oiled machine to highlight the best up-and-coming talent. Although the festival itself now draws a crowd of celebrity watchers and swag suite marketers, the website still caters to indie-film lovers. You can watch trailers, interviews, clips year-round and stream the fest live in January.
Tribeca Film:The film festival Robert De Niro and his friends founded in their own neighborhood revolutionized the way fests handle their online presence. Tribeca had online screening rooms, real-time Q&As where readers could post their questions, live streams from the festival, and an ongoing social media component so anyone with a computer could feel they were part of the action downtown Manhattan.
Openfilm: Lastly if actual film festivals - no matter how large or small - are your passion, Openfilm.com has one of the most comprehensive calendars of upcoming festivals around the world. The mission is to help filmmakers make the submission deadlines, but fans can figure out which film fest is coming to a city near you - and you'll be surprised at just how many there are every year from Anchorage to Youngstown.
We've told you some of our favorite sites for keeping up with film festivals, but we'd love to hear which film festivals you love, and which ones make you want to save up for a movie-themed vacation.
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Clever Girls Collective is a social media marketing agency founded by women who wanted to use their deep marketing experience and broad social network relationships for good. We know that women who engage in social media are some of the most authentic, connected, trusted, and vocal influencers -- not only online, but "in real life." Sandie Anglo Chen is the senior movie critic for Common Sense Media and a contributing writer to Daily Variety, Aol's Moviefone Blog, TV Squad, and MTV's NextMovie.com. She's been covering pop culture for more than 12 years as a reporter and writer based in New York City and Washington, D.C. She lives in the DC area with her movie-loving husband and three young children, and you can find her on Twitter @urbanmama.
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