Just In Time For Sundance, indieWIRE Is Redesigned, Relaunched,
and “Re-Imagined”
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--At a moment when news organizations are scaling back coverage of film
festivals and independent filmmaking, indieWIRE,
the leading news, information, and social networking site for the
international independent film community, today re-launched and upgraded
its service with a significant redesign, and a new model for aggregating
and showcasing the best coverage of independent films and filmmaking
available from publishers across the web. The new design of indieWIRE
(www.indiewire.com)
is the culmination of months of solicited reader feedback, and goes live
just in time to offer readers comprehensive coverage of the Sundance
Film Festival, which begins this week in Park City, Utah.
Since 1996, indieWIRE has been the leading source of information
on independent film. From its beginning as an email newsletter, to
today’s re-launch and redesign, indieWIRE has served as an online
hub for filmmakers, industry insiders and fans of independent film. It
was acquired in July 2008 by SnagFilms
(www.snagfilms.com),
which brings the best nonfiction films to a global web audience,
promotes viral web distribution through virtual movie theater widgets,
and connects viewers with the causes, charities and communities the
films spotlight.
In addition to a physical redesign of the site which organizes and
presents more of indieWIRE’s exclusive editorial content in an
easy-to-read homepage, the new indieWIRE will augment its own
award-winning coverage of the independent film community with both
editorially-curated and user-generated content linked from other sources
of news and information across the web. In the weeks ahead -- and
showing evidence of its collaboration with SnagFilms.com -- indieWIRE
will offer its audience an “indieWIRE To Go” widget with daily
essential content, which readers will be able to snag and post on their
own website or social network page.
In announcing the re-launch of the site, indieWIRE founder and
editor Eugene
Hernandez said, “Our new home is a big step, shaped by the input,
feedback, and ideas of countless IW readers, industry folks,
friends, colleagues, and filmmakers. It has taken us more than a year to
develop this new look and approach, but truly, it’s the culmination of
12 years of effort to produce the most comprehensive site on the web
covering the independent film industry. indieWIRE has evolved and
expanded since we launched it as an email only publication I sent out
nightly to a couple of hundred folks. With the backing of SnagFilms, our
committed and fertile audience, and now with our new aggregation model
and design, IW has gone far beyond re-launching – it has been
completely re-imagined.”
As part of the relaunch of indieWIRE, the site will feature new
content, including:
-
Exclusive first person article by Geoff Gilmore, director of the
Sundance Film Festival, on the future of film festivals and the state
of independent film today;
-
Exclusive preview of a scene from “Medicine for Melancholy", with
commentary on the artistic and technical aspects, by the award-winning
independent filmmaker Barry Jenkins
Media Advisory
Eugene Hernandez will be in Park City at the Sundance Film Festival
beginning on Tuesday evening, January 13th through Sunday,
January 18th. For information and commentary on independent
film industry, and on the films shown at the 2009 Sundance festival,
Eugene can be reached either by contacting Noah Black (noah@snagfilms.com,
or 
202-295-8797
), or by contacting Eugene directly (Eugene@indiewire.com).
About indieWIRE
indieWIRE is the leading news, information, and social networking
site for the international independent film community, including
comprehensive coverage of indie, documentary and foreign language films,
as well industry news, film festival reports, filmmaker interviews, and
movie reviews. Its website (http://www.indiewire.com)
includes special sections for high-profile film festivals, the new
indieLOOP community site, filmmaker and industry weblogs, as well as
resources and tools for emerging and established filmmakers. Awarded the
Webby for best film website, indieWIRE was lauded as a "must
read" by Variety, branded the "online heartbeat of the world's
independent film community" by Forbes, and dubbed "best indie
crossroads" by film critic Roger Ebert.
About SnagFilms
SnagFilms features free ad-supported viewing of hundreds of
award-winning titles from some of the greatest names in documentary film
production and distribution, including PBS, National Geographic,
Sundance Preserve, IndiePix, Peter Jennings Productions, Arts Alliance
America, ITVS, Koch Lorber Films, Cactus Three, and many others. Many of
the most prominent documentary filmmakers are participating not only by
having their films distributed via SnagFilms, but by engaging with their
audience through blogs and offering special “bonus” material, as well as
suggesting nonprofit organizations that viewers motivated by these films
can link to and support via charitable contributions, volunteering or
spreading the word.
Since its launch in July 2008, SnagFilms virtual movie theater widgets
have been embedded into over 110 million webpages, including websites
for The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The
New York Times and Politico, and hundreds of blogs and
thousands of social network pages like Facebook. OVGuide named SnagFilms
a Top Site of 2008.
The company was founded by digital entrepreneur, documentary film
producer, sports entrepreneur, and philanthropist Ted Leonsis, and is
additionally backed by AOL co-founder and Revolution LLC Chairman, Steve
Case, philanthropist and former digital executive Jean Case, and
operating executive and philanthropic venture capitalist Miles Gilburne.