DramaFever.com and Asian CineVision (ACV), presenters of the Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF), the first and longest-running Asian film festival in America, have partnered to create a brand new vehicle to find the next break-out Asian filmmaker online.Extending the reach of the AAIIFF, DramaFever.com will host an eight-week contest, running through 12 noon Eastern on September 6. The “DramaFever Audience Favorite Short Film Award” contest is designed to expose 20 emerging filmmakers of select short AAIFF screened films from USA, Australia, Canada, China, Japan, Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan, via a brand new dedicated DramaFever-ACV page at . The winner will be announced September 15 and have their work featured on DramaFever.com’s front page for one week.“With this brand new online contest to find the ‘next Ang Lee’, DramaFever has the rare opportunity to help emerging filmmakers share their work with hundreds of thousands film fans instantly,” says David Hou, vice president of DramaFever. “Typically, directors spend years to have their film screen in dozens of theaters on the festival circuit for one or two days, and this partnership with ACV frees film makers from traditional limitations.”The online film festival contest marks DramaFever’s move toward becoming a major U.S. distribution platform for film festivals introducing productions from Asia and Asian Americans to English-speaking audiences. In July, Toyota signed as the video site’s first major American sponsor/advertiser, specifically attracted to the potential of the online film festival contest. Drawing over 70% of its audience from non-Asian audiences, DramaFever recently launched a show page on Hulu.
“Working with Drama Fever at a time of its growth and in time for our 33rd year of the Asian American International Film Festival (AAIFF10), we extend the exposure window beyond the annual festival and the subsequent National Festival Tour to a larger audience share,” says ACV’s Acting Director John Woo.
ACV sees the content deal and contest with DramaFever true to its mission “to exhibit, promote and preserve the media work by artists of Asian descent or about the Asian experience.” Filmmakers and productions screened at AAIFF, which takes place in New York each year, then gain greater in-theater exposure across America through the ACV National Festival Tour.
Visit the new ACV page now on DramaFever