Big indie film news this morning as SnagFilms launches a Beta site with free streaming features including Super Size Me, Run Granny Run and Dig! - films that you can also embed as a widget which I am very excited about (I’m a big fan of widgets). I’m desperate to have a play with SnagFilms but am so snowed with work in London that I only have time to write this very brief blog post. So check out all the news on indieWIRE and explore SnagFilms on my behalf.

The 2008 SXSWclick! finalists have been announced and you can watch all fifteen online and vote for your favorites. I’m really pleased to be a juror in the Really Real Shorts category along with Ambulante Documentary Film Festival’s Elena Fortes Acosta and Frownland DoP Sean Williams. Check the films out online now.

I went to the Where Internet and Film Collide event at the IFC Center last night, presented as part of Internet Week New York and hosted by IndieGoGo and Filmmaker Magazine. You can read more about the event on The Film Panel Notetaker but I wanted to link to some of the cool films I saw last night here too.

First Green Porno. I love Isabella Rossellini - she’s beautiful, funny and the sort of person I would love to eat cheese with. Christopher Barry, who does digital media and business strategy at Sundance Channel, spoke after screenings of Snail and Praying Mantis from the Green Porno series and he seems like a smart guy. He sees both the possibilities and the limitations of digital distribution - speaking of ad-supported models he said “50% of nothing is still nothing.”

I was also impressed with the work of m ss ng p eces. I loved their Pangea Day film, Moving Windmills. They know how to use the limitations of the short form to create strikingly visual pieces, even when they are making corporate vids like their films for TED (I challenge you not to be inspired by them!).

Overall, it was very gratifying to see how much creativity/activity there is out there, even without all the revenue models in place. Here are some links to other work that screened that you should check out:

The West Side

Drawn By Pain

Jamie Stuart’s NYFF45

Beyond the Rave

I just linked to this on Twitter but it’s so gobsmackingly creative that I have to post it here too.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

My friend and Shooting People NY Editor Jesse Epstein shot this and you should watch it. It’s funny and shows you some very crafty ways to get rid of all that leftover Matzah.

Thanks to Agnes Varnum over at the Resources Blog for reminding me to watch the VPRO doc on Wikipedia. I heard about it via various tweets and blog posts from the Next Web conference in Amsterdam and finally got a chance to watch it earlier today.

As a fan of documentaries I am fascinated by debates around the idea of “truth” and the endless unpacking of the nature and meaning of the word. But I am also aware that sometimes you need to just get on with it and accept that you are always going to be telling a subjective, manipulated story and that you can only hope it is fair to your subjects and does not knowingly mislead your audience. This is NOT to say that anything goes. The “fair and balanced” claims of Fox News are laughable precisely because a news channel should strive to tell stories about the world that reflect the world, rather than a particular political viewpoint. Context is key here, as is media literacy. I know that I need to take Wikipedia entries with a rather large grain of salt although I’m always amazed by how accurate they usually are. Fox News on the other hand requires such a large dose of media alertness to weed out the factual snippets from the moralizing that I’m not sure I’m up to the job.

I think everyone in The Truth About Wikipedia makes some valid points but many of them are so determined to drive their point home that they miss the bigger picture. Andrew Keen is right that Web2.0 has resulted in a “cult of the amateur.” One of the results of this is that there is some really idiotic content across the web. Take for example this brilliant exchange in the YouTube comments for the Wikipedia doc:

NaNlolz
Andrew Keen is an narcisistic dumb@ss who just ‘doesn’t get it.’
Ignore him….(or in web2.0 lingo: vote him down!)

hemansunderwear
I bet you have 10 myspace pages and no girlfriends.

Some of these amateurs, however, produce incredible work, and in the process re-define all these terms we use so loosely: expert, amateur, producer, consumer etc. Knowledge and talent do not only, or even necessarily, come with a university degree. Keen speaks as though “experts” are somehow completely free of bias, inaccuracies and power struggles. And what defines an expert anyway? I wrote my Masters thesis on electricity and I still can’t change a plug! Sometimes I think people get stymied by their own logline. In Keen’s case: we are in an age of the amateur ergo all amateurs are incompetent and all experts are right. It just doesn’t follow.

Anyway, without getting into further debate about the nature of truth and knowledge, here is the doc about Wikipedia. See what you think. I like the quote from Ndesanjo Macha toward the end when he explains that the original meaning of amateur is people who love what they do. I think that Web2.0 at its best provides a platform where this love can be fully expressed, without any meddling from gatekeepers who may or may not get it. And if you want experts and curation, well you can have that too. Either/Or makes for good soundbites but it doesn’t explain the world we actually live in. What we need is more digital literacy that will help to explain this world and empower the next generation of expert amateurs.

We are continuing to improve our WATCH FILM tools on Shooting People with lots of exciting new developments to help our members upload and share their work. We have just introduced an embed tool and to show you how lovely it is here is the trailer for We Are Together made by Shooters Paul Taylor and Teddy Leifer, a wonderful documentary about a group of AIDS orphans from South Africa who form a choir.

UPDATE: We’re working on this RIGHT NOW so this video may go through a few different versions and look a bit different each time. This is beta baby!

YET ANOTHER UPDATE: Ok our player IS lovely but it is also HUGE and it was eating up my whole blog so I have taken it down while we continue to work on making it awesome.

UPDATE MARK 2: Ok let’s see if we’re at awesome yet. Hooray, I think we did it!

I love this video from the BBC - celebrating both April Fools Day and the BBC iPlayer. There is a long tradition of April Fools hoaxes on the BBC, going back to the infamous “Spaghetti Tree” incident of 1957, when it was reported that “Spaghetti is not a widely-eaten food in the UK and is considered by many as an exotic delicacy.”

You can see the “making of” film here.

Some people want to do the trailer voice. You know the one I mean, that impossibly deep, always slightly hilarious voice saying stupid things like: “In a world without love, without hope, without chocolate, one man never gave up.” I never wanted to do the trailer voice but I did want to make montages. I love me a good montage. They always make me goose-bumpy even if they’re awful. I’m going to do a blog post one of these days that is just “montages I have known and loved.” Until then this piece from MTV will have to do. MTV Movies editor Josh Horowitz gets an Oscar wish granted by Kurt Loder:

• MTV
• Music Videos
• MTV Shows
• Entertainment News

Well not MY life, I have far more important things to do. I do. Really. But if you are going to lose minutes of your life watching YouTube, this video is quite funny. I like the “rising tide of communism” at the very end.