The Vimeo Festival + Awards this past weekend in NYC were a great time, with all sorts of panels, networking, and partying going on (I assume much of this will make it online at some point -- it is Vimeo we're talking about, after all). I met a lot of fellow filmmakers (and gave away some free passes too) and expect that the festival will be a staple of the NYC filmmaking community for years to come. As part of the festival, the Vimeo Awards were announced, and the winner of the first annual $25,000 Vimeo Grant is Last Minutes with ODEN, an emotional short about a dog's battle with cancer, directed by Phos Pictures and shot on a Canon 7D:
The song in the video is Bon Iver's atmospheric Brackett, WI off of last year's terrific Indie Rock compilation Dark Was The Night.
All in all the award-winners are a great representation of something Bruce Sterling said in his closing keynote: Vimeo is the Dick Van Dyke show to YouTube's I Love Lucy. As Bruce clarified for an audience too young to remember either, the former is for smart people and the latter is for -- his words, not mine -- morons. Check out the best narrative winner, Thrush:
The complete list of winners, congratulations to all:
- Narrative: Thrush by Gabriel Bisset-Smith
- Documentary: Last Minutes with ODEN by Phos Pictures
- Music Video: Liars ‘Scissor’ by Andy Bruntel
- Animation: Between Bears by Eran Hilleli
- Original Series: Break-ups The Series by Ted Tremper
- Experimental: oops by Chris Beckman
- Motion Graphics: TRIANGLE by Onur Senturk
- Captured: Fluid Sculpture by Charlie Bucket
- Remix: BREAKDOWN the video by Kasumi
Finally, if you're wondering what the festival was like, here's a nice recap of day one from the Vimeo-ers themselves:
All in all it felt less like a traditional film festival and more like... I don't know, the future? Exhibit A of that was Seeper's scene-mapped projection on the IAC building, where the festival took place:
[via Filmmaker Magazine]
