To the Film Community:

This is a very serious letter.  It was emailed to our filmmaker members and we would like to share this with the larger community.  It concerns the survival of Canyon Cinema. As most of you probably know, film rentals over the past few years have been steadily declining. This is a result of the proliferation of digital media. Many of Canyon’s major filmmakers who have brought substantial income to the organization have now made their work available in digital formats. Many of our renters, especially in universities, no longer have access to adequate film projection. Often after the purchase of a DVD, instructors of cinema studies continue to use the digital media and forsake the renting of the original 16mm prints. This is partly due to their own dwindling rental budgets and the lack of well functioning projectors.

Read the full letter at Canyon Cinema's website.

FLEX, the Florida Film/Video Festival, proudly announces the winners of the 2011 competitive festival, as selected by our jurors Mark Toscano (Curator, Filmmaker, and Preservationist, The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Film Archive) and Vanessa Renwick (Filmmaker and Founder, Oregon Department of Kick Ass).

Category: Video longer than 10 minutes
- 1st Prize: The Voyagers by Penny Lane
- Runner-up: Compressive/Percussive by Scott Stark
- Runner-up: Utopia, Part 3 by Sam Green

Category: Videos longer than 10 minutes
- 1st Prize: Collide-O-Scope by Naren Wilks
- Runner-up: White House bu Georg Koszulinski
- Runner-up: Beaver Skull Magick by Steve Reinke

Category: Films shorter than 10 minutes
- 1st Prize: Horizontal Boundaries by Pat O'Neill
- Runner-up: Make Them Jump by Kelly Spivey
- Runner-up: Trees of Syntax, Leaves of Axis by Daichi Saito

Category: Films shorter than 10 minutes
- 1st Prize: Triumph of the Wild by Martha Colburn
- Runner-up: Tokyo-Ebisu by Tomonari Nishikawa
- Runner-up: Iron-Wood by Richard Tuohy

Kodak Film Stock Prizes
- Day/Night (Devil's Millhopper) by Andres E. Arocha
- TUSSLEMUSCLE by Steve Cossman.

or-bits.com is pleased to present Acceleration, its new and fourth online programme.           

Featuring works by:
Benedict Drew, Maarten Vanden Eynde, Rosa Menkman, Ayo & Oni Oshodi, Steve Ounanian, Maria Domenica Rapicavoli, Damien Roach and Amanda Wasielewski.

The programme will be accompanied by an ongoing series of blog contributions by: Steven Ball (artist and writer), Mark Fisher (writer), Morgan Quaintance  (curator, musician and writer), Louis Savy (director of SCI-FI-LONDON Festival).

or-bits.com is an ongoing curatorial project, a platform displaying contemporary arts and a trigger for the production of new works. or-bits.com is devoted to exploring ways we perceive things, promoting practices and dialogues across and beyond media, and to thinking over and working with the empty web page.

Joost Rekveld (International Jury Member)
Special Mention: Robert Todd: Groundplay
Grand Prix: Rimas Sakalauskas: Synchronisation

Leila Topic (International Jury Member)
Special Mention: Sarah Wood: For Cultural Purposes Only
Grand Prix: Karl Lemieux: Mamori

Florian Wüst (International Jury Member)
Special Mention: Atsushi Wada: In a Pig’s Eye
Special Mention: Zachary Epcar: The Salariat in Parts
Grand Prix: Anna Abrahams: Desert 79, 3 Journeys into the Unknown

Critic’s Jury (Branka Bencic, Marijan Krivak, Igor Prassel)
Special Mention: Rimas Sakalauskas: Synchronization
Grand Prix: Laure Prouvost: Monolog

FUJI Award
Rei Hayama: A Child Goes Burying Dead Insects (Kodomo ga Mushi no Shigai wo Umeni Iku)

The Audience Award
Johann Lurf: The Quick Brown Fox Jumps over a Lazy Dog (Zwölf Boxkämpfer jagen Victor quer über den großen Sylter Deich 140 9)