| ResFest 2000 | |
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Does
anybody remember Wired magazine before it turned into an e-commerce rag
like all the others, or even better, Mondo 2000 before it went under?
Back in the day, every issue gave me this strange contact high, this feeling
of belonging to a cutting edge avant-garde, of being clued into a vital secret.
There was an exhilaration to it which slowly drained away once TIME magazine
and everybody else caught on, too. Now I wish I hadn't just listened to Jaron
Lanier, John Perry Barlow, and Nick Negroponte pontificate about the Digital
Revolution but bought some stock, too.
What I'm getting at is this: I haven't felt quite the same giddy excitement over new possibilities until last week's New York ResFest, a traveling circus of a festival that showcases digital filmmaking to audiences all over the world.
Anybody who's ever tried to make a Flash movie, or just downloaded one and squinted at it on the computer screen will be thrilled to see the morphing vector animation blown up to silver screen size -- and anybody with a creative bone in their body will feel like running back home to geek the night away, producing their own film.
ResFest grew out of the 1995 Low Res Film Festival with the mission to promote digital filmmaking. It has been projecting digital films onto large screens since 1997, including the hilarious and oddly enlightening Timothy Levitch documentary The Cruise and The Last Broadcast (which may or may not have been ripped off by a certain low budget witch hunting movie). Past speakers at the festival have included Mike Figgis, Kyle Cooper, and Roman Coppola. Adding locations to its global touring schedule every year, ResFest now visits San Francisco, Seattle, London, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, Seoul, Tokyo, and Osaka.
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