MUBI Blog

For this year’s Festival de Cannes we once again teamed up with Cisco for Cannes à la Flip—a contest challenging Short Film Corner directors to shoot a short film while attending the 2010 festival.

We started Stage One of the competition a couple weeks before the Festival by inviting the 1,800 Short Film Corner filmmakers to submit a pitch for a short film. The three caveats for their short film idea being: 1. It had to be shot wholly on a Flip Video camcorder; 2. It had to be shot during and around the Cannes Film Festival; and 3. The maximum length of the short could only be three minutes.

For Stage Two we picked the 300 best pitches and gave each filmmaker a Flip Ultra HD to not only use for making their film, but to also keep after the competition. Our booth was set-up for the duration of the Festival in the Short Film Corner of the Palais des Festivals building so that we could hand out the Flip Video camcorders directly to the filmmakers.

Depending on when the filmmaker picked up their Flip Video camcorder, they had anywhere from one to six days to complete their short film and have it uploaded to our competition site. It was pretty amazing to see these various filmmakers around the Palais shooting, or Flipping, scenes for their movie. Filmmaking and film watching was happening all around.

As the submissions began to roll in we saw a diverse mix of experimental and narrative work that pushed the boundaries of what one could accomplish with a 4” x 2” camera. Some were character driven, some extremely avant-garde, some heavy with CGI effects work while others tackled the Flip Video camcorder aesthetic head-on.

Stage Three of the competition kicked off the morning after the deadline as a select jury—composed of film festival directors, distributors and our very own Danny Kasman—got together at the Celluloid Dreams office in Cannes to view and vote on the top three films.

A few hours later our CEO, Efe Cakarel, got in front of a packed house of hopeful winners.

Drum roll.

First Place: Kiteling by Eva Pervolovici who receivies €3,000 and a meeting with Hengameh Panahi, President of Celluloid Dreams; Second Place: One Night Avec La Mer by Colin L. Racicot who receives €1,000; and in Third Place: Youth by Ayse Altinok who receives €500.

View the three winning short films embedded below:

1. Kiteling by Eva Pervolovici

2. One Night Avec La Mer by Colin L. Racicot

3. Youth by Ayse Altinok

You can view all the submissions at our Cannes à la Flip project page.

Photos: Fabrizio Maltese / fabriziomaltese.com

Cannes, 18th May 2010: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe [SCEE] has announced a partnership with leading online film library MUBI, to bring to PlayStation®3 (PS3™) a new service that will break open the world of independent, international and classic cinema, and introduce PS3 owners to movies outside the mainstream. MUBI will be a free, downloadable application that gives PS3 owners the key to the ever-expanding film library of MUBI - an incredible online ‘cinemateque’ for movie lovers, packed to the rafters with acclaimed independent, foreign and classic films to stream on demand.

This autumn, PS3 users will have access to a treasure trove of celluloid curated by experts - so that even non-experts can enjoy what might otherwise take a lifetime to discover. MUBI will offer more than 300 films at launch from directors from Audiard to Zeffirelli; and they’re all going to be available to stream directly to your PS3. You’ll get to discover movies you never dreamed about, watch your choice of films whenever you like, and talk about the ones you love with your friends.

So how will it all work? First, you download the free MUBI application from PlayStation®Store. Then, you open it up and start watching – it’s really that easy. Next, you look around in amazement. You find festival gems, classics, famous independent releases and art-house flicks. You discover the work of world-famous directors like the Coen Brothers and Tarantino alongside Latin American directors and restored shorts from the most obscure of archives. You’ll spot free-to-watch movies alongside pay-per-view movies that you can rent for a week – and you’ll be tempted by the thought of an all-you-can-watch monthly subscription. You find exclusive online premieres, Oscar-winners, Palme D’Or winners, collaborations with international film festivals, and so many other choices you might not know where to start. But MUBI offers a whole community of film loving fans so that help is always at hand.

Joining SCEE President Andrew House in Cannes at the unveiling of the new service, MUBI founder Efe Çakarel said: “MUBI is the fastest growing online destination for lovers of independent, foreign and classic film - and it is amazing how many people that covers.

Our partnership with PlayStation® brings online cinema to TV screens in homes around the world giving PlayStation owners a whole new world of entertainment to explore. And discovery couldn’t be more fun - from finding out about the films behind the latest buzz at Cannes, to taking the film recommendation of MUBI members like Martin Scorsese.”

Andrew House welcomed MUBI to PlayStation adding: “PlayStation is about great entertainment, from games to content, delivered straight to the living room or enjoyed on the go. Today this ranges from VidZone, the free on demand service music service, through to PlayTV where you can watch, record and rewind live TV at your leisure. MUBI offers the perfect independent counterpoise to our box-office blockbuster, hi-def, video delivery service, catering for the tastes of an ever broader customer base. Add in PS3’s DVD and Blu-ray disc player and we have the perfect ticket for film lovers.”

This is cinema for cinema lovers – a movie service that takes you beyond the mainstream and deep into thousands of views of our world through different lenses – all streamed straight to your PS3 to turn your living room into your own private cinema. MUBI for PS3 will be launched this autumn initially in the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Iberia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Benelux, Nordic countries, Australia and New Zealand. Prepare to dim your lights and enjoy the main feature.

Find out more at www.eu.playstation.com/mubi

About Sony Computer Entertainment Europe Ltd

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE), based in London, is responsible for the distribution, marketing and sales of PlayStation®3, PlayStation®2, PSP™ (PlayStation®Portable) and PlayStation®Network software and hardware in 99 territories across Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Oceania. SCEE also develops, publishes, markets and distributes entertainment software for these formats, and manages the third party licensing programs for the formats in these territories. Since the launch of PlayStation 3 in November 2006, over 35.7 million units have been sold globally and continue to be sold at a record level.  Maintaining its position as one of the most successful consumer electronic products in history, PlayStation 2 has sold over 144.5 million systems worldwide.  Since its launch at the end of 2004, over 61.5 million PSPs have been sold globally, highlighting the importance of the portable entertainment market.  With the huge increase in interest and accessibility of network applications and network gaming, over 47 million accounts have registered to PlayStation Network, the free-to-access interactive environment, and over 980 million items have been downloaded.

More information about PlayStation products can be found at www.playstation.com

PlayStation, the PlayStation logo are registered trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. PS3 and PSP are trademarks of Sony Computer Entertainment Inc. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.

About MUBI

MUBI is the fastest growing online destination for lovers of independent, foreign and classic film; an online cinema, anytime, anywhere. MUBI will give you the latest buzz from the Cannes Film Festival or a restored masterpiece personally chosen by Martin Scorsese (he’s a member, too!).  A social network that can let you find a visual gem that will definitely not be released in the local multiplex, and allows you to find a girl in Tokyo who loves Kubrick (she actually exists, her name is Yuko and she’s into Wong Kar-Wai too…).  MUBI invites you to watch, discover and discuss visionary films from all over the world.  Founded in 2007 by Efe Cakarel, MUBI is backed by Celluloid Dreams, The Criterion Collection and Costa Films and is the exclusive partner of The World Cinema Foundation.  MUBI is based in Palo Alto, New York, Paris, London and anywhere around the world where there’s a movie lover. 

Hello.

We’ve got bad news. 

In fact, might be good for you to think something really bad now.

Something along the lines of the opening sequence of Godard’s Weekend - not in cinematic terms, of course, just emotionally. The thing is… you might need some perspective to hear this. Actually, lets all think that the entire world is collapsing (and for some bizarre reason only John Cusack makes it). Let’s all imagine that.

That would be pretty bad, right? Got it?  Feeling horribly sad?

Here we go then…

We are changing our name.

That’s right. We win a Webby and the first thing we do is change our name.

But here’s the thing… We really like it. And some people might actually be able to type it (a lot of friends around the world struggled to be honest). And by making it easier more people will get into great cinema. Which means that maybe - just maybe - one day we won’t have to stand films like the remake of 2012 … Although we would watch it and rejoice speaking terribly about it… (Why do we always end up talking about John Cusack films? ) Anyway, where were we? Oh, our name… 

mubi.com

It’s a grower.  

We’ve specially built this site if you can’t let go just yet.

And trust us, there’re some exciting things coming soon…

Actually, think of something really good… Like finding out that P.T. Anderson will be shooting Napoleon using all the notes Kubrick left in his boxes… Well, maybe not that, but that would be pretty great, right? Spread the rumor, who knows…

Anyway, lets toast for great cinema without boundaries.

Sincerely,

The Mubi Team

It was an honor to be nominated for a Webby in the category “Movie and Film” alongside District 9, this year’s People’s Choice Winner, IFC.com, the Institute for Human Continuity and the National Film Board of Canada’s Waterlife.nfb.ca — but to have actually won!  Wow.  Thanks guys, we couldn’t do it without our fabulous community!

The 9th !f Istanbul AFM International Independent Film Festival (www.ifistanbul.com) closed with a radical new experiment designed to take the festival across borders and enable festival films to reach wider audiences across different geographies. Coinciding with Istanbul’s reign as 2010 European Cultural Capital, the project !f2: Live from Istanbul was a ground-breaking initiative designed to take the festival experience to provincial audiences who otherwise have limited or no access to independent and arthouse cinema.

The Auteurs provided secure, top quality online streaming to theatre owners in 12 cities across Turkey, as well as in Cyprus, Gymri (Armenia), Ramallah (Palestine) and Tangiers (Morocco), allowing audiences to watch five much-anticipated festival titles, including the award-winning Un Prophet and Nobody Knows About Persian Cats.

“With the global economic crisis cutting even further into the chances of distribution for alternative content, we believe it is more important than ever to create new channels of communication, collaboration and distribution,” said festival co-director Serra Ciliv. Many of the cities did not have a cinema. Those that did were mostly reliant on mainstream or third run local features. The project’s success was largely due to strong partnerships forged across the many smaller cities of Anatolia and other countries nearby. The other titles that screened the weekend of February 21st were Age of Stupid, Hisham Zaman’s Bawke and Winterland and She, a Chinese. International partners, Celluloid Dreams, Wild Bunch, Norwegian Film Institute, Arts Alliance Media and Films Boutique provided the titles which made this vision possible. At a closing conference on February 21 filmmaker Bahman Ghobadi, acclaimed novelist Elif Shafak, Sundance Film Festival senior programmer Caroline Libresco, ARTE general director Jean Rozat, Mexican producer Daniel Birman Ripstein and DJ Spooky discussed the possibilities presented by digital technologies and the internet, as well as its challenges.

What !f² Partners Said

Zeynep Ozbek, Director of Alanya Sinematek Foundation

We are a bunch of movie lovers who have been struggling to fill out this gap since 1994.With !f ² project, we have succesfully reached out to the audience which we have been trying for the last 8 years. This project is a miracle for a city like Alanya where there is very little amount of investments made for arts & culture. Even during Un Prophet, which lasts 154 minutes, the audience hardly moved.

Anber Onar, founder of Sidestreets, Cyprus

Cypriots were thrilled to have this event here and to watch the chosen films with such great quality. The fact that Cyprus is an island already isolates the place from the beginning. But being a part of a whole was very interesting and exciting experience.

Sinan Seyfettinoğlu, director of the Antakya Saklı Ev Culture Cafe

After the screening we had debates with all participants and concluded that the selections showed that people are just like countries, and countries just like people. Nothing is what it appears to be. Antakya loved the event and looking forward to it’s next one.

!f²: Live from Istanbul will keep expanding in the following years across an even wider geography.