About Film Selection

  1. How do you select films?

    Any film that has played at least one film festival is eligible for distribution through b-side.

  2. Why not be more selective. Don't you want "good" films?

    The director Billy Wilder famously said, "An audience is never wrong." We agree. From our perspective, the best judge of merit for a film is the audience. That's why our film marketplace is a community, rather than a narrow selection curated by a panel of "experts."

    b-side is all about giving the audience tools to discover and share. It's about choice.

    We reject most definitions of "good" and "bad" films. The reason is simple: several of our all-time favorite films are ones that other people--maybe even a lot of other people--just plain hate.

    "Hollywood" films are designed to appeal to as many people as possible. Or more accurately, to *not appeal* to as few people as possible. (Think about it for a minute--it'll make sense.)

    Independent films, on the other hand, don't try to be everything to everybody. They take risks. They're quirky, challenging, disturbing, outrageous. With that comes the risk that some people won't like them. But it also comes with the possibility that others will connect more deeply.

    We created b-side as a place we'd want to go to find our next favorite film. Attempting to define "good" makes that nearly impossible.

  3. Do you really believe there's no such thing as "good" or "bad?"

    Ok, yes, it's hard to say "The Godfather" is crap by any standard, and it's also hard to say "Stepmom" is somebody's art.

    However, most films (and music, books, art, etc) fall into that grey area in between. Some people are going to hate it, and some will be indifferent. But a few, sometimes even a lot, will absolutely flip out for it.

    The Internet makes it possible to offer virtually unlimited selection. Why would we want to limit ourselves to just the things we like? Or even worse, to just the things we think most people will like?

    YouTube has created an efficient mechanism for letting people sort through massive quantities of content, and have the "interesting" stuff bubble up to the top. Or if not to the top, at least to reach the slice of people who would be amused, interested, challenged, etc. by it.

    b-side was created to be the same kind of ecosystem. Only unlike YouTube, it's entirely dedicated to independent film. And unlike YouTube, it was invented specifically to help filmmakers make money from their work.

  4. Why limit submissions to films that have played festivals?

    b-side is about independent film. While we don't want to get mired in a philosophical argument about what is or isn't a film, it's important to have some loose criteria.

    There’s an economic theory called "The Wisdom of Crowds" that suggests that a large, diverse group of people will do a better job making certain types of decisions than any individual expert will. That's why we want the audience to decide for themselves what to see and what not to see.

    In a similar fashion, we think that the programmers of the world's 3,500 or so independent film festivals do a reasonable job of collectively defining what makes an independent film.

    It's a very broad definition. Not to suggest that films that don't play at film festivals aren't worth watching, but festival screening does provide a valuable first level filter. If it's good / interesting / whatever enough for a festival, it's worth giving a shot.

  5. Are there any types of films you won't accept?

    Well, given the festival filter is broad, there are very few types of films we won't accept.

    That said, we reserve the right to reject something if we view it as harmful. We don't support films that are overtly racist, homophobic, etc. And we don't do porn. Just about everything else if fair game.