WHEN: Thursday- Saturday, December 1- 3, 12- 6 p.m., Sunday Brunch, December 4, noon- 4 p.m.
Miami, Fla. – South Florida Web Fest (SoFloWebFest), Miami’s premier festival dedicated to digital entertainment and non-traditional voices of cinema, will debut during Art Basel weekend, December 1- 4, 2016, at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex at 212 NE 59th Terrace.
The premier festival was activated with the support of a Tourist Development Grant in the amount of $6,500 from the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs. It will screen 27 unique web series and short films from the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Iran, India and Australia on December 1- 3 from 12- 6 p.m.
Kicking off the screenings on Thursday, December 1 at 10:00 a.m. is the award winning feature “Soup Jomu” by Dudley Alexis highlighting the Haitian tradition of celebrating freedom with Pumpkin soup. The selected web series and short films are from six categories: Comedy, Drama, Fantasy/Sci-Fi, Non-Fiction, Suspense/Thriller, and Animation. The official 2016 SoFloWebFest film selection and the full screening schedule is available at www.soflowebfest.com.
Filmmakers and attendees will also experience expert panel discussions and presentations on the business of technology and film. They will participate in a virtual reality and immersive content experience, distribution panels, a digital art crawl, and an awards ceremony and block party with its sister festival, the Now or Neverland Art Fair: Urban Uproar Edition.
Thomas is a Miami-native and a co-founding festival director of Melbourne Web Fest, Australia’s international web series festival. She is one of only five female directors in the web series festival industry working to decrease the gender gap in festival management and directorship.
Thomas joined forces with veteran cinematographer Bart Mervil to launch the inaugural SoFloWebFest.
The festival will announce its winners on Saturday, December 3. Winning filmmakers will be awarded $1,500 in cash prizes and auto-entry to SoFloWebFest’s affiliate festivals – the Los Angeles Web Series Festival (LAWebFest), the largest web series festival in the world; KWeb Fest, the first web series festival in Korea and Northeast Asia; and Roma Web Fest, the first official web series festival in Italy.
The festival culminates in brunch on Sunday, December 4 from noon- 4 p.m. at Chef Creole at 200 NW 54th St.