Jason Ooi

Announcing the Winners of the 2020 Long Distance Film Festival!

After many weeks of similarly containing our excitement, Long Distance Film Festival is finally ready to announce its 2020 festival prize recipients.

In our original statement regarding prizes, we mentioned that our three jury prize winners would be granted distribution deals on festival sponsor Kinoscope‘s streaming service and that the – alongside our three audience award winners – would receive year-long access to the platform itself, as well as that of Mubi.

We are excited to announce that our selection was strong this year – to the point where our esteemed jury felt it necessary to also grant three other films honorable mention awards. Furthermore, Kinoscope, in sharing with the sentiments of our passionate jury, will be extending its distribution grand prize to all nine of our winning films! Each selection will be followed by a brief statement made by the jury. comprised of entertainment lawyer Steve Holmgren, Spirit Awards nominations manager Setu Raval, and Cannes programmer Leo Soesanto, with the audience award statements from us on the team.

The votes have been tallied and the jury has been consulted! Without further ado, the winners of Long Distance Film Festival’s 2020 edition’s jury prize, honorable mentions, and the audience awards are:

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Senses of Cinema: “Closer Than Ever? The 1st Long Distance Film Festival”

“What those hundreds of viewers were presented with was a festival that managed to avoid turning into a mere receptacle of COVID-themed shorts, but sought instead to showcase films that dealt with questions that long predated the health crisis, and which the forced isolation only made more pressing… “

Long Distance Film Festival was featured in the latest issue of Senses of Cinema! We are all very gratified at their enthusiasm, support, and the kind, thoughtful words written about our selection.

Read the full festival report by critic Leonardo Goi here.

Spectacle Theater Partnership Announcement

We at Long Distance Film Festival are excited to announce a partnership with Spectacle Theater, a collectively run screening space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Established and staffed entirely by hard-working, cinema-loving volunteers, the theater exemplifies an at-risk spatial aspect of theater-going that we hope will be preserved in the aftermath of this cultural anomaly: the impact of curated film on local communities. For almost a decade, Spectacle has brought overlooked works, offbeat gems, contemporary art, radical polemics, live performance, and more to their audience from a wide array of nationally recognized artists.

Though its physical doors have been closed since the onset of quarantine, Spectacle continues to bring old and new programming to its audience through its “Spectacle in Exile” effort, a live-stream effort that has pushed the micro-cinema onto the global stage. In spite of the financial burden placed on the non-profit repertory effort, the theater has graciously offered to share both their audience and reputation by hosting the Long Distance Film Festival on their platform.

In the meantime, visit Spectacle’s website for some rare, quality cinema.

Kinoscope: “Watching in the Time of Quarantine: Jason Ooi and the Long Distance Film Festival”

I had the pleasure of interviewing with Kinoscope critic Steven Erickson this past week in preparation for the upcoming festival. We talk about the challenges of this kind of undertaking, the differences between physical and digital film festivals, and thoroughly tease at parts of our official selection!

The official program will be released tomorrow — be sure to follow our social media pages to keep in the loop!

Interview can be found on the Kinoscope publication here.

LDFF Program Announcement

Submissions are now closed; the program is nearly ready. Our team has spent the past month mulling over 600+ submissions from over fifty countries and compiled our favorites into four days of programming.

Each program runs 70-85 minutes long and features narrative and experimental films of all genres, including personal essays, music and dance videos, films recorded entirely on laptop screens, phones, or, inversely, by analog means, and more…

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LDFF Official Jury Announcement

With submission deadlines now over — and with less than a month to go before we can finally showcase the amazing talent on our programs — we at the Long Distance Film Festival are incredibly excited to announce our inaugural jury! These revered members of the film community, with their varied tastes and experiences in the industry, will be judging our official selection by deciding on our grand prize recipients. We are extremely honored to have their support! Without further ado, our jury is as follows:

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