Sad Day

B-Side Entertainment is closing. The company, based in Austin, is a tech and distribution company that provides website services for film festivals, and I have encountered it a number of times when attending film festivals. For example, when I went to the Austin Film Festival in October, I was able to read about all the films being shown online, as well as create my own personalized festival schedule and rank each film after I'd seen them. deadCENTER Film Festival, in Oklahoma City, also used B-Side's services. It will be sad to see them go.

The complete article discusses the practical aspects of their closing, such as funding issues, as well as having really interesting things to say about their distribution business model.

Concludes Hyams, “We find ourselves at a time of great upheaval in the film industry. We are somewhere between the old and the new world. Technology is altering the way films are being made, and there are new avenues for how films can be consumed. How audiences discover and find films — that’s what’s we have been focused on. We have proven an amazing amount of things about how audiences become engaged and how to connect with them, but we were not able in that time to build a business that would sustain itself.