On November 14th, the film festival Betting On Shorts will screen its program simultaneously in London, Athens, Barcelona, Bucharest, Maribor, Naples, Novi Sad, Poznan, Thessaloniki, Stockholm and Wiesbaden. And the short film Windows Vista: Predator Edition by Desedoian Paul Kamuf is in that mix.

Betting On Shorts is unique not only for it’s dispersed distribution, but also that:

So the audience can have some fun as well, we invite everyone to bet on which film will win. Bets must be placed before the screening. But no worries: trailers of all participating films are screened in all participating venues and on the website a week in advance of the competition. Those who have placed their bet well, can win cinema tickets, dvds, books and the like.

I think that a festival giving additional and unique value to the audience is in sync with Brian Newman’s talk Better Than Free. Former CEO of the Tribeca Film Festival and a film industry consultant, Newman engages this issue:

As the wealth and survival of traditional media businesses are built on selling precious copies, the free flow of free copies is undermining the established order. If reproductions of media are free, how can we keep on financing films and how can we find value in the media we create and sell?

Given that we can now see short form content online, it also behooves film festivals to re-think their USP and value exchange with audiences, and I believe Betting On Shorts is doing just that.