South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual set of film, interactive media, and music festivals and conferences that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas, United States. It began in 1987, and has continued to grow in both scope and size every year. In 2011, the conference lasted for 10 days with SXSW Interactive lasting for 5 days, Music for 6 days, and Film running concurrently for 9 days.
South by Southwest is run by the company SXSW, Inc. which plans and executes conferences, trade shows, festivals, and other events. In addition to the three main South by Southwest festivals, the company runs three other conferences, two in Austin: SXSWedu, a conference on educational innovation, and SXSW Eco, an environmental conference; and one in Las Vegas: SXSW V2V, a conference focused on innovative startups.
SXSW Music is the largest music festival of its kind in the world, with more than 2,000 acts as of 2014. SXSW Music offers artist-provided music and video samples of featured artists at each festival via their official YouTube channel.
A film festival is an organized, extended presentation of films in one or more cinemas or screening venues, usually in a single city or region. Increasingly, film festivals show some films outdoors. Films may be of recent date and, depending upon the festival's focus, can include international and domestic releases. Some festivals focus on a specific film-maker or genre (e.g., film noir) or subject matter (e.g., horror film festivals). A number of film festivals specialise in short films of a defined maximum length. Film festivals are typically annual events. Some film historians do not consider Film Festivals as official releases of film, like Jerry Beck. The best known film festivals are the Venice Film Festival, the Cannes Film Festival, the Toronto Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, and the Berlin International Film Festival, the latter being the largest film festival worldwide, based on attendance. The Venice Film Festival is the oldest major festival. The Melbourne International Film Festival is the largest film festival in the Southern Hemisphere and one of the oldest in the world. A 2013 study found 3,000 active films festivals worldwide—active defined as having held an event in the previous 24 months.
The $100 Film Festival is an independent film festival that runs for three days every March at the Globe Cinema in downtown Calgary, Alberta. The festival showcases films in all genres by local and international independent artists who enjoy working with traditional film.
Created in 1992 by the Calgary Society of Independent Filmmakers (CSIF), the $100 Film Festival started as a challenge for area filmmakers to a make a low-budget movie using Super8 film for less than $100. In later years, the CSIF changed the rules to allow filmmakers to work with 16 mm film and an increased budget. The $100 Film Festival still works to embody the spirit of low-budget film making and has become a popular event in Calgary.
The 24/7 Film Festival is an annual amateur film festival in held in the Mosman, Manly, Warringah Council and Pittwater Council area, all northern suburbs of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. First held in 2002, the Council-sponsored event consists of a challenge to 12- to 24-year-olds to produce a 7-minute film in 24 hours. The festival also consists of film workshops and is crowned by the showing and judging of the entries, held at various local cinemas.
In 2005 the festival won a local government cultural award for leadership in cultural programs and projects.
A list of 'items' is published each year at the commencement of the competition. It is required that an item from each of the 4 categories appears in each film and that a total of at least 5 items are used. This is to ensure that films were made specifically for the competition and were made in the 24-hour period designated. The four categories are Locations, Concepts, Lines of Dialogue and Objects.
A "Secret Rule" is announced each year at the same time, placing some extra restriction on films to further ensure adherence to the time constraint. The rules for 2006 and 2007 have been to have a line of dialogue in a language other than English, and to have two characters say a line of dialogue at the same time, respectively.