Broadband Jungle Blog

Amazon and Tribeca launch re:frame collection

Amazon and the Tribeca Film Institute are launching reframe, a nicely categorized site with downloads of rare films, including documentaries and indie pictures, as well as eclectic and barely available work from Sally Potter, Alain Resnais and Marguerite Duras.

Downloads through Amazon's Unbox into your PC or Tivo vary from 12.99 for Alain Resnais' Night and Fog to 26.99 for Hubert Sauper's Darwin's Nightmare.

Gregg Goldstein reports in the Hollywood Reporter:

Tribeca, Amazon to digitize rare films. Launching with 500 titles; 1,500 more within a few months.
"The Tribeca Film Institute is partnering with Amazon to launch Reframe, a Web site for rare film and video owners to digitally convert and sell their titles.

Launching Monday at ReframeCollection.org, the site will provide free digital copies of video and "at-cost" conversion of films to content owners, then rent or sell the digital download or DVD versions on a nonexclusive basis. Reframe will use Amazon's DVD on Demand service for physical copies and its Unbox service for digital downloads to rent or sell.

TFI CEO Brian Newman said the site will launch with 500 titles, and about 1,500 will be digitized within the next few months. Reframe's goal is to host 10,000 titles within the next year. Experimental works from such filmmakers as Sally Potter and Ken Jacobs, archival footage and other rare materials will be available via the site's search engine.

Major funding for the venture was provided by the John D. & Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation."

Paris Hilton takes a cab ride to the Darkside at DocuWeek

Paris Hilton a documentary lover? 
The notorious heiress accompanied actor and budding documentary filmmaker Adrian Grenier of HBO's Entourage fame to a screening of Taxi to the Darkside at DocuWeek, the annual Oscar-qualifying showcase of documentaries organized by the International Documentary Association.

Filmmaker AJ Schnack of the excellent Kurt Cobain About A Son which is also screening at DocuWeek, has all the good stuff on his nifty All These Wonderful Things blog:

Paris Hilton Goes to DocuWeek (No Lie) and Adrian Grenier's Next Doc Project

It's not often that we, in our relatively doc-centric little world, are allowed to get all Just Jared on your ass, but lo and behold, DocuWeek - at least for a brief moment - found itself in the middle of a paparazzi moment when celebrity friend-couple of the moment Paris Hilton and Adrian Grenier dropped by the Landmark to catch Alex Gibney's excellent TAXI TO THE DARKSIDE.

Read AJ's entire post here.
Photos and a video with all the pertinent Paris and Adrian pics can be found here.

filmmaking 2.0

In the digital world, you no longer need to go to school in the big cities to become a filmmaker: Anyone can access research, distribution and a supportive community through the Internet.

One of the best web communities in this regard is TriggerStreet.com, an initiative started by actor-director Kevin Spacey’s company after they were flooded by thousands of unsolicited pieces of mail from aspiring filmmakers. TriggerStreet is relaunching this week with a new sponsor (Budweiser) and an expanded offering for its currently 150,000 members: You can post screenplays and short films (and soon, according to their newsletter, novels, plays and short stories).

Members are encouraged to review each other’s films and screenplays, and after a certain amount of posts you’re allowed to upload your own labor of love to the site in exchange for critique from the rest of the community. Very involved members eventually make it into the into the upper echelons of “TriggerStreet Academy” – I shall report should I get there.

Current TV also has its TV academy, only theirs is staffed with some of the best storytellers in the business. Their website offers film and writing classes with Robert Redford, Catherine Hadwicke and Dave Eggers. Not bad for the first network to fully integrate viewer-generated content into their programming.

With viewer-generated content heating up the web, competitions and festivals to showcase mobile and Internet films are popping up like mushrooms: The Huffington Post hosts the ongoing Contagious Festival, American Express introduced the 15 Second Clips Competition at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, The 48 Hour Film Project goes online courtesy of BitTorrent, Current TV co-sponsors the VC2 Competition with IFP and even AOL just launched the open ended Festival de Cine Corto.

What could be next?