The journey to Venice begins: Top 10 films selected for Your Film Festival

Today, we are one step closer to finding the world’s next great storyteller. Over 15,000 filmmakers entered Your Film Festival but only ten finalists remain, each with the hope of winning $500,000 to produce new content with actor Michael Fassbender, director Ridley Scott and his world class team.

During the past month, 3 million people got involved with Your Film Festival by watching, sharing, and voting for their favorite films. After tallying the votes, we’re excited to announce our ten finalists:

88:88, Joey Ciccoline & Sean Wilson (USA)
Bat Eyes, Damien Power (Australia)
Cine Rincao, Fernando Grostein Andrade & Fernanda Fernandes (Brazil)
The Drought, Kevin Slack (USA)
El General, Diego Pino Zamora (Bolivia)
The Guilt, David Victori Blaya (Spain)
North Atlantic, Bernardo Nascimento (United Kingdom)
Super.Full., Niam Itani (Lebanon)
Scruples, Adrian Powers (Australia)
This Time, Ramy EL-Gabry (Egypt)

The finalists will soon travel to Italy where they will have their short films screened at the historic Venice Film Festival. They will also pitch a new project idea to Ridley Scott’s production team who, along with the jury including Michael Fassbender, will ultimately name the grand prize winner at a special ceremony on September 2, 2012, in Venice. As part of their journey to Venice, Emirates has invited the filmmakers to stopover in Dubai for a series of events celebrating their achievement.

Join these filmmakers as they travel to Venice and stay tuned to the Your Film Festival channel where we’ll take you behind the scenes, tell you more about the finalists, provide special edition movie posters, and of course, unveil the winner.

Jonathon Youshaei, YouTube Marketing, recently watched “A Conversation with my 12 Year Old Self: 20th Anniversary Edition.”

Movies and TV shows now available for purchase on YouTube and Google Play

About a year ago, we brought you thousands of full-length feature films from major Hollywood and independent studios to rent on youtube.com/movies. Following our launch yesterday, you can buy movies and TV content from shows like Revenge, Parks & Recreation and Breaking Bad, and top movie studios like ABC Studios, NBCUniversal and Sony Pictures.

Purchased movies and shows can be played back as many times as you like on YouTube, and on your Android device via Google Play. We’ll soon be bringing the experience to Google TV devices too.



Visit youtube.com/movies and youtube.com/shows today to discover and buy your favorite movies and TV shows, and check back soon for even more titles and shows in the coming weeks.

Jonathan Zepp, manager of TV/Film content partnerships, recently purchased and watched “The Walking Dead.”

70 Korean cinema classics come to YouTube

In the last few decades, South Korea has emerged as a powerhouse of cinema, with both Korean-made films winning global accolades and Hollywood remaking Korean mega-hits like My Sassy Girl, and, if industry gossip is true, Oldboy. Many of the all-time classic Korean films, however, have been hard for global audiences to get their hands on.

Working together with the Korean Film Archive, we now have 70 classic Korean films available globally for free on YouTube—complete with English and other translated subtitles. The films are all available at youtube.com/koreanfilm, organized in playlists by decade as well as by director.

Movies include A Hometown in Heart, made in the early years of Korean Independence; debut film of noted auteur Sang-soo Hong The day a pig fell into a well; A Coachman, the first Korean film to win awards internationally; and more. Many other titles like Aimless Bullet and The Barefooted Young are available in HD.

We hope this archive will keep Korean cinephiles busy for a while with films that have been too hard to find outside of Korea for too long.

Jae Hoon Jung, YouTube contents partnership manager, Google Korea, recently watched Woman of Fire.

Michael Fassbender and Your Film Festival

On February 2, we opened submissions to Your Film Festival, a competition to find the world's best storytellers and connect them with a global audience. Created in partnership with Ridley Scott and Scott Free London, the Venice Film Festival, and Emirates, Your Film Festival will send 10 finalists, as chosen by you, to the 2012 Venice Film Festival where a grand prize winner will receive $500,000 to work on their next project.

Today, we'd like to introduce the newest member of the Your Film Festival team, award-winning actor Michael Fassbender.



Fassbender joins Ridley Scott as a Your Film Festival juror, as well as co-executive producer on the winner's grand prize project. This means that he and Ridley will work together to produce the winner’s next film project! With credits including Shame, X-Men: First Class, 300 and Inglorious Basterds, Michael brings world-class experience ranging from some of the biggest blockbusters to the most critically acclaimed indies.

If you haven't submitted yet, consider this your 1-month warning. Submissions close on March 31 at midnight ET. For more information, check out the Your Film Festival channel.

Good luck!

Nate Weinstein, entertainment marketing manager, recently watched “Kevin Allocca: Why videos go viral.”

Bringing the creativity of the Sundance Film Festival to YouTube

The annual independent film extravaganza known as the Sundance Film Festival is underway in Park City, Utah. For film lovers who couldn’t make it this year to meet to-be-discovered filmmakers and rub shoulders with celebrities, we're bringing Sundance to you here on YouTube.

Last year, we showcased past and present short films in the YouTube Screening Room. This year, we’ve teamed up with Sundance Film Institute to premiere a collection of films that are available for the first time for digital stream.

Films include Obselidia (Independent Spirit Award Winner), Chasing Ghosts: Beyond the Arcade (2007 Sundance Film Festival documentary on the arcade gamer competitions in the ‘80s), New York Times Critic’s Pick Lord Byron and 1994 Sundance Film Festival Grand Jury Award Winner What Happened Was.

To mark the last weekend of the festival, we’ll premiere Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie tomorrow at the same time the shock humor duo showcase their world premiere at the 2012 festival. This star-studded comedy features Zach Galifianakis, Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly and is already picking up buzz in Park City.

For the best of Sundance and thousands of other titles, get more into movies at YouTube.com/Movies.

Mildred Padilla, Movies Merchandising Manager, recently watched “Brick.”