2012 Vimeo Awards + Festivals: Celebrating Tomorrow's Visionaries
It’s that time again – the time to celebrate the artistic prowess and creativity of hundreds and thousands of young aspiring filmmakers who capture a few minutes in a seemingly typical and mundane moment – these artists make these moments special by adding poignancy and capturing them with such emotion, that we as human beings cannot help but to react. Personal stories capturing those human elements that are missing from mainstream cinema – that’s what you’re sure to witness at the 2012 Vimeo Festival + Awards.
In celebration of this week’s festivities being held in New York City from June 7-9, Technorati will be covering the awards in front of and behind the scenes for the remainder of the week.
Today, we start with the big cheese at Vimeo, who unlike most others in their positions share an intense and burning passion for creativity and not just the numbers their video visionaries bring to the equation.
Vimeo President, Dae Mellencamp and Festival Co-Director Jeremy Boxer talk about what the whole thing means to them.
“The awards started as a way to celebrate all of the creativity that’s out there every day.” Dae Mellencamp said passionately.
The great thing about the Vimeos is that the celebration of these touching stories is not limited to those that are submitted to Vimeo.
In the 2010 Vimeo Festival + Awards, Eliot Rausch won the grand prize for the uber-emotional short film, Last Minutes with Oden. The gripping short film captures the final moments of a man with man’s best friend, that man’s best friend was his dog Oden. Eliot serves as one of this year’s judges.
“Eliot was such a well-deserving winner,” Jeremy reflected. “He really served as the poster child for what we were trying to do. His film embodied what we were about at that point in time – small films from small cameras that were able to tell personal stories that you couldn’t see beforehand; a story that was meant to be shared about a human experience.”
“Highly emotional stories that make you cry. I was just crying in my office, that’s the kind of amazing work that we want to shine and we want people to see.” Dae said.
One of the truly special things that should be noted about the Vimeos is the opportunity that it gives us to see all those short films we would not see if it were left up to the mainstream film business. The Vimeos celebrate those.
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