In July, we reported on the open-source movie community A Swarm of Angels - a group that hopes to update “the current filmmaking models of Hollywood and independent film to create cult cinema for the digital age.”
They’ve announced what they are calling the world’s “first open source film trailer,” for The Unfold, a sci-fi thriller being made open-source [...]

 
Oscar-winning filmmaker Michael Moore is going the route of Nine Inch Nails, Radiohead and others and releasing his latest work, Slacker Uprising on the Internet as a free download. According to Moore, it’s the first major feature-length film by a noted director to debut for free via the internet.
Slacker Uprising traces Michael Moore’s 62-city tour of the [...]

Snagfilms, a new site that offers free online distribution of documentary films, is now live, offering instant streaming of movie like Super Size Me.
The site’s embed code takes you to the Snagfilms site, instead of letting you watch the film onsite. Snagfilms needs to get this fixed to work as a true embed.
At launch, more [...]

A Swarm Of Angels - an open source movie community - is looking for people to contribute images for their movie The Ravages:
We want to find an easy way for members to contribute to the content of the Swarm project at every stage. The easiest way we could think of for you to contribute visually [...]

YouTube has announced The YouTube Screening Room, a dedicated area on YouTube that will showcase an international selection of films.
The YouTube Screening Room will feature four new high-quality short films every two weeks, as well as feature-length films on a case-by-case basis.
Filmmakers will have the opportunity to submit their work for consideration through an online [...]

Amazon.com is planning to take on Apple’s iTunes Store with a new video-on-demand service, the company has revealed.
Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos, speaking at the All Things D Conference, described the service as a “new version of video on demand” that will begin showing videos instantly on personal computers. Videos will be sold on an a [...]

The long tail of cinema is coming soon to Internet television, according to New York Times article.
It looks at Cinetic Media, a company that is working on distributing indie films via the Internet:
John Sloss is one of the top sales agents for independent films. Mr. Sloss, 52, has handled the sale of such diamonds in [...]

Much as the movie industry would like to avoid having Apple becoming the dominant digital vendor for digital movies as it has in the world of digital music, Apple is doing it anyway.
While the movie and television industry experiments with a bunch of incompatible standards and technologies, Apple has been inexorably putting together a video [...]

Viva le difference!
While US government support of the arts frequently gets bogged down in controversies over the depiction of sexuality and anything bordering on controversial, the European Union is sexing up YouTube to showcase its support for EU cinema:

The European Commission’s Let’s Come Together promotion is intended to highlight the organization’s role in the production [...]

U.S. video rental spending is well off its 2001 peak of $10.3 billion, but revenue from online subscriptions is beginning to put some steam back into the rental industry, according to Adams Media Research (AMR). AMR projects online subscription spending to increase by 41% to $1.9 billion in 2007.
“The five-year decline in the video rental [...]