“11 Paper Place” From Vermont PBS Wins “Most Viewed”
Fourth-Annual Event Accrues 400K Views on Roku® Devices, PBS Digital Platforms, YouTube and PBS Social Media Channels
Arlington, VA; July 30, 2015 – Two winners of the fourth-annual PBS Online Film Festival were announced today. The film that took the “People’s Choice” top honor was “Sinner Victim Saint,” a short narrative presented by CET/Think TV, centering on a newlywed husband who has recently lost his wife in a car accident and the dark turn of events that teaches him the power of sacrifice.The animated film “11 Paper Place,” presented by member station Vermont PBS, a love story about two sheets of paper who meet in a recycle bin, was the most-viewed of the 25 short films screened online.
Roku® customers were given exclusive early access to the PBS Online Film Festival for one week beginning June 8. From June 15 - July 17, the festival was available via PBS and station digital platforms where viewers were able to vote for their “People’s Choice” favorite film. During the six weeks the films were available for screening, entries were streamed more than 400,000 times, up from 312,000 streams in 2014 over a seven-week period.
“Sinner Victim Saint” follows Isaac, a newlywed husband who has recently lost his wife in a tragic car accident. After her funeral, a dark turn of events leads Isaac to a meeting with a sinister man who claims he can bring his wife back from the dead. There’s a catch, though; in order to bring her back, Isaac learns that he must sacrifice his life for hers. The film was directed and written by Moses Flores, who spent the first three years of his career writing and directing TV commercials and web videos for corporate clients. In 2012, after a long creative rut, he made the decision to jump head first into the world of independent filmmaking. “Sinner Victim Saint” debuted in 2014 at the Eichelberger Film Dayton Festival and won the Ohio Shorts Audience Choice Award.
“11 Paper Place” is an animated love story about two sheets of paper that magically transform into paper people as they are spit out of a malfunctioning printer into a recycling bin. Filmmaker Daniel Houghton is currently an animation teacher at Middlebury College, where he also manages a range of media projects.
The films were nominated and presented to the festival by a number of media partners and member stations, including Center for Asian American Media (CAAM), Latino Public Broadcasting (LPB), National Black Programming Consortium, Pacific Islanders in Communications (PIC), POV, StoryCorps and Vision Maker Media, as well as PBS local member stations, including Alaska Public Media, CET/ThinkTV (Cincinnati/Dayton),KLRU-TV Austin PBS, KQED (San Francisco), Louisiana Public Broadcasting, Twin Cities Public Television, UNC-TV and Vermont PBS.Promotional partners for the PBS Online Film Festival include Independent Lens and World Channel.
The PBS Online Film Festival is part of a recently announced multi-platform strategy to increase the reach and visibility of independent film on PBS and its member stations. The strategy will draw on strategic scheduling, digital content and distribution, social media and marketing to shine an even brighter spotlight on this important mission-focused content.
More information about the PBS Online Film Festival can be found at pbs.org/filmfestival. The festival is also on Twitter at #PBSolff.
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Contacts:
Jennifer Byrne, PBS, jrbyrne@pbs.org, 703-739-5487
Chelsey Saatkamp, Goodman Media for PBS, pbsdigital@goodmanmedia.com, 212-576-2700
