Online Film Fest Gives Boost to Digital Hollywood.

SURE, the Oscars were the highest-profile event to come out of Hollywood lately, but the first Yahoo Internet Life Online Film Festival could have more long-term, significance.

Held last week at various locations along the Sunset Strip, the festival promises to have a slingshot effect, accelerating the nascent love affair between the digital and Hollywood sets.

"This festival is the first blessing of the fact that the Web is emerging as a medium capable of providing and transforming entertainment," said Rodger Raderman, co-founder of L.A.-based entertainment Internet company IFilm. "Yahoo put the imprimatur on that. It will be very interesting to see where the industry goes from here."

About 2,000 people representing more than 45 major studios - along with Web, indie film and digital technology companies - attended the sold-out festival-cum-conference.

The industry luminary-studded panels tackled such topics as "New Media and the Underground," as assessed by South Park's Matt Stone and Trey Parker, and "Bringing Hollywood to the Web," a discussion featuring digital-industry investor Frank Biondi and top executives from IFilm, Wirebreak.com and HitPlay.

The festival featured 12 short and six full-length movies. "Time Code," shot digitally by "Leaving Las Vegas" director Mike Figgis, was the most anticipated.

While old-school entertainment companies were mostly there to look and learn, the online digital firms shared the clear agenda of boosting their profiles with mainstream Hollywood.

The soon-to-be launched Glendale-based Pop.com made a rare public appearance, giving the industry a better sense of where the company (which is backed by lots of Hollywood heavyweights) is headed. Executives at IFilm, which had three short features and two full-length features entered in the festival, were there with the hope that their filmmakers would win.

And Venice-based WireBreak Entertainment wanted to find talented filmmakers with whom to work. "We already have a pretty high profile, but we want to get greater industry awareness out of this event and to attract creative talent," said WireBreak.com Senior Vice President Sal LoCurto.

When first announced about six months ago, the event sparked only moderate interest. One reason is that it came on the heels of a handful of other tepid Internet-related film festivals, such as Leonardo DiCaprio's ongoing, online "LeoFest."

But Yahoo's affair is really the first of its breed. And when a veritable flood of big-name Hollywood creative talents committed to online gigs over the past several weeks, interest snowballed.