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In the wake of the canceled 2020 SXSW Film Festival edition, Mailchimp has teamed with Oscilloscope and SXSW to launch Support the Shorts, a streaming event to view select short films from the fest for free on the Mailchimp Presents platform starting today. This will include over 70 short films, including the four festival winners and seven special recognition films which were recently announced.

“The night that SXSW was cancelled, filmmakers were wondering what to do next, and prominent members of the tight-knit film community offered support and a signal-boost — we wondered if we could do the same at scale. With this project, we’re trying to accomplish two things: to offer these artists a platform for exposure, and to provide access to some amazing work from artists I’m sure we’ll be hearing about for a long time to come. And, we’re excited that many people who weren’t planning on attending the festival,...

The cancelation of South by Southwest earlier this month was a huge blow to people across the industry, but short filmmakers whose work was set to debut there were particularly hard hit. With no festival, these filmmakers — many of them early in their careers — were suddenly without a platform to widely share their films. Now, boutique distributor Oscilloscope Laboratories and tech company Mailchimp have a solution: Today, they launched an online platform offering the vast majority of this year’s SXSW shorts online for free.

The site will feature around 75 films, all for free with no login required. Most are available now, with more to be added in the coming days.

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The films will remain available for at least 30 days. Filmmakers can...

Following its abrupt cancellation earlier this month due concerns over the coronavirus outbreak, SXSW on Tuesday announced the 2020 award winners for the 27th annual film festival.

After being forced to shut down a week before its scheduled March 13 kickoff, SXSW director of film Janet Pierson revealed alternative plans that included providing screening links to allow jurors to see and hand out awards to the fest’s competition films.

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While no Audience Awards were handed out, Jury Awards were selected from the narrative feature and documentary feature competition categories as well as short films and other juried sections such as the Film Design award.

Normally, the SXSW Film Festival award winners are handed out during a lively ceremony at the end of the first weekend, but this year required some improvisation. When the SXSW became the first major film event to cancel in the face of global pandemic, it was unclear what would happen to the hundreds of films and filmmakers primed for the late March festivities.

While many filmmakers were left struggling to figure out their next moves, the festival’s leadership opted to hand out awards to the films set to premiere at the festival, with the juries announced weeks earlier. SXSW Director of Film Janet Pierson and her team made the decision to “continue and expand to all the juried competitions, if the majority of the filmmakers opted in and juries were available.”

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