AFI BLOG: Media and Technology

With ‘Screening Room,’ YouTube dips its toe in the cinema world

At the Henry Fonda Theater on Hollywood Boulevard last night, YouTube introduced its new “Screening Room,” an area of the site devoted exclusively to selected independent films. The Screening Room will feature four short films every two weeks, as well as the occasional full-length feature. The first several slates of films are chock-a-block with recognizable names and Academy Award-nominated filmmakers, but as the program continues, YouTube expects to include films submitted to a kind of cinema slush pile, to keep at least a modicum of the “You” in YouTube.

The first four films showcased both the flexibility of the short form and the way it seems to lend itself to limited-attention, online viewing. “The Danish Poet,” a precious animated love story by Torill Kove, won the 2007 Oscar for best animated short, and the mind-bending puppet opera “Love and War” won the same award at last year’s Los Angeles Film Festival. Miranda July’s “Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?,” starring John C. Reilly, represented Wholphin, the quarterly DVD magazine from McSweeney’s. Rob Pearlstein’s “Our Time Is Up,” starring Kevin Pollak, was nominated for an Oscar in 2006.

In a panel session after the screening, the filmmakers talked about the potential upside of having their films on YouTube.

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