Here’s a great post from Techdirt on a inventive way of choosing film festival entries. The festival, Cinequest, located in San Jose, California, aims to promote “Maverick Filmmaking” through:

• The Cinequest Film Festival: a discovery festival of films and technology forums that was recently named the Top 10 festival in the world by the Ultimate Film Festival Survival Guide.
• Cinequest Distribution: delivering films to fans worldwide through cutting-edge Internet technologies plus DVD—while creating new marketing and business models for the Independent.
• Mentoring and Education: groundbreaking education and mentoring programs including Camp Cinequest.

As opposed to traditional film festivals that choose their films by way of a panel of experts, Cinequest asks filmmakers to post their films to a social media site where users vote on the submissions. The most popular films are then screened at the festival. You can see a selection of clips and films from the festival on Youtube.

Not everyone is wild about the new model of distribution. An article by the AP notes that, “the software they chose also enables illegal sharing of movies, music, software and other content. And that raises the ironic prospect of an up-and-coming filmmaker getting a legitimate distribution deal after succeeding at Cinequest, only to see his future work traded illegally using the same software that gave him his break. ”

I, for one, think this is a fairly shortsighted view of things. By and large, we’re not talking about films that are going to go on to become major blockbusters. The films shown here, and their filmmakers, are ones who would be unlikely to crack the public perception without the efforts of Cineplex and other like minded entities. I’m all for giving talented people a chance to show their craft and likewise letting moviegoers decide which movies are worthy of their time.