The actor/director who was one of the first in Hollywood to inspire young creative minds to venture out into independent film making by giving them an affordable and practical means to find an outlet for their imaginative film project, is now stepping into the high-tech arena by making indie films mobile.
Robert Redford has big plans to bring indie films to cell phones all over the world.
Beginning in February of next year, Redford’s Sundance Institute will release five short films to every cell phone in the world that has the capability to play them.
“The goal is, if this all works out after we launch this, more people in the world will see these films than any form of cinema,” Redford said, when launching the Global Short Films Project today in New York.
And who is Bob’s target audience? “People on subways, people on buses, people traveling, people waiting, or people taking a break and they just have a 15-minute break and they want to amuse themselves or catch up with something,” he said.
The short films will be distributed through Global System Mobile Association (GSMA), a global trade association representing more than 700 different providers that include more than 2.6 billion phones.
These five movies, by filmmakers ……will be free, and transferable via Bluetooth, infrared, or flash memory from phone to phone.
The object of this experiment is to see how far and wide these videos spread, but Redford says in an interview with ABC News that he is firmly on the side of protecting the intellectual property rights of artists.
“The next iteration — when the dust settles on this, you find out what’s what,” he said. “Then you have to proportion who should get what. The artist should be taken care of.”