With South by Southwest (SXSW) Film festival 2020 being canceled, their team has been working non-stop to find ways to showcase films and pilots that would have premiered during the festival. SXSW announced this week a group of filmmakers officially selected for the 2020 SXSW Episodic Pilot Competition are launching an ‘SXSW 2020 Pilot Showcase’ on Vimeo, a streaming event to preview diversity led (more than half LGBTQ content and creators) pilots from the festival for free to global audiences, starting on April 14th, 2020.
The line-up includes six exclusive online premieres, including two documentaries, hailing from all over the world — from the US to Australia to Japan to the UK — introducing audiences to the clever voices behind edgy comedies Bored, Cooper’s Bar, The Dream and This Isn’t Me, and engaging documentaries Bananas and Homecoming: The Journey of Cardboard.
After last month’s SXSW cancellation people across the industry are struggling to find ways to adapt, but episodic filmmakers whose work was set to debut there are now facing a particularly tricky challenge. With no festival premiere, these creators — many of them early in their careers — have suddenly found themselves without a platform to launch or promote their potential breakout series.
“We saw a need to pivot on the cancellation of SXSW and open up conversations with online platforms about how to now connect with an audience — at a time when connection feels more important than ever,” said Coral Amiga and Nicole Hartley, co-creators of the pilot Bored. They reached out to Vimeo and set out to create a special showcase of select SXSW 2020 Film Festival episodic pilots available to the public, which perhaps in normal circumstances wouldn’t be.
“Vimeo is proud to offer creators of all kinds a platform to share their stories, now and always,” said Courtney Horwitz, Head of Brand and Content at Vimeo.
“This sampling of our Episodic Pilot program showcases diverse perspectives using comedy and heart to tackle the complexities and joys of human connection,” said Claudette Godfrey, Senior Film Programmer. “In this time of uncertainty, we love seeing these filmmakers forging a path for their work to connect to the audience who we know could use some laughs.”
Below are the select titles with links to Vimeo:
- Bananas <https://vimeo.com/405397156>
- Documentary, LGBTQ
- Director: Rachel Anderson; Screenwriter: Rachel Anderson, Mary Duong
- Bored <https://vimeo.com/404815489>
- Comedy, LGBTQ
- Director: Georgia Oakley; Screenwriter: Coral Amiga & Nicole Hartley
- Cooper’s Bar <https://vimeo.com/405159085>
- Comedy
- Director: Alfredo de Villa; Screenwriter: Nick Morton, David Conolly
- The Dream <https://vimeo.com/403428574
- Comedy
- Director: Ron Najor; Screenwriter: Trevor Fernando, Ron Najor
- Homecoming: The Journey of Cardboard <https://vimeo.com/405446733>
- Documentary
- Director: Yuko Shiomaki, Anna Thorson Mayer
- This Isn’t Me <https://vimeo.com/403921238>
- Comedy, LGBTQ
- Director: Adrian Rojas Elliot; Screenwriter: Ben Kawaller
The pilots will remain available for at least one month, with a virtual Q&A with the creators on Thursday, April 23, 2020 (more details to come) at https://vimeo.com/showcase/6998714 and SXSW Shorts Channel can be found here: https://vimeo.com/channels/sxswshorts.
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Source: SXSW, Vimeo
