Subject: Call For Entries Deadline Coming Soon!
Date: Fri, 12 May 2000 10:39:00 -0800
From: awards <movieawards@planetout.com>

Dear Film and Videomakers, 

Have you made a queer short that's 20 minutes or less sometime in the 
last two years (since 1998), US or Canadian?  If so, it would be really 
great if you would submit 
your film to the Queer Short Movie Awards!  
http://movieawards.planetout.com

The deadline is coming up soon: May 19th and the entry fee is only 
fifteen bucks.  There are many very cool things about the awards.  

We are:

1) Giving a lot of money to queer short filmmakers ($10,000 Grand Prize, 
plus five $1,000 first prizes for comedy, drama, documentary, animation 
and experimental); 

2) Drawing a lot of exposure to the 25 finalists (five in each category) 
and the winning films, as well as a fair amount of attention to the 
non-winning entries; 

3) Creating much glamour and excitement for those winning makers (we're 
flying the winners to the awards ceremony and putting them up and 
throwing a big party); 

4) Providing other programming and distribution opportunities to 
filmmakers (the finalists' work will be seen by a Sundance programmer and 
by the largest gay distributor in the US and will also be screened by a 
foreign sales agent -- SND Films -- for a possible international 
distribution deal); 

5) Creating an exciting exhibition opportunity for all the queer short 
makers to get their work seen by queer audiences around the world in an 
interactive format (the finalists will be competing for audience awards, 
and all of the exhibited films will have their own area for viewer 
reviews and comments); 

6) Solidifying our relationships with all you wonderfully talented GLBT 
film and videomakers out there and helping you promote your work; and, of 
course, 

7) Providing content for the PlanetOut and IFILM.com Web sites. 

Just to anticipate some of your questions about the online exhibition 
rights you'll be granting to PlanetOut and IFILM.  We understand that 
this is a decision that every filmmaker is being faced with these days. 
And we well understand that there are makers who want to hold off a bit 
longer before deciding how to move ahead into this whole new world of 
online exhibition. This is why we've included a "Revocation Notice" 
clause to make it all a little less intimidating. After an initial 
exclusivity period (90 days for non-winning entries, one year for cash 
prize winners), if you decide that you'd rather not have us showing your 
work, you can send us a note saying that you no longer want your film to 
be exhibited on the site and we'll take it down. Of course, beyond that 
initial exclusivity period, filmmakers are only granting us non-exclusive 
rights anyway. 

We think that this is a really exciting project and hope it will be of 
mutual benefit and value to everyone involved. We are well aware of the 
economics and rights issues of the Internet, and we spent a considerable 
amount of time determining how we would do this.

Just to recap: 

The winning submissions end up granting us an exclusive online exhibition 
license for a period of one year; the non-winning entries grant us an 
exclusive online exhibition license of 90 days (at which point, if the 
filmmaker wants to revoke our license, they just need to send us a note 
saying they no longer want the film to be exhibited on the site and we 
take it down). 

If you need any clarification, please don't hesitate to email me at 
movieawards@planetout.com

And now, please surf on over to the site to download that entry form:

http://movieawards.planetout.com

We look forward to seeing your shorts.

Be Well,
Ariella Ben-Dov
Awards Director