The RomeFilmFest and MySpace (www.myspace.com), the website with almost 200 million users around the world, are joining together for the ‘Online Short Film’ competition running from July 18, 2007. The contest is for films with a maximum duration of 5 minutes that can be made using any equipment or technology and be in any  format. The winners will be shown in the RomeFilmFest’s Extra section.

The competition is divided into five categories: best narrative short, best music video, best short film made with a cell phone, best animated short and best mush up. 

Entries must be uploaded onto MySpace between July 18 and September 2. The full contest regulations can be found at the following link www.myspace.com/romefilmfest .

By September 4,  the competition newsroom – under the supervision of Extra’s artistic director Mario Sesti – will choose the best 75 entries (15 for each category). This selection will then be published on the MySpace website and the works will be open to public voting from September 10 to 30.

Eventual winners will be given an exclusive item as a prize made expressly for the occasion by the competition’s official partner, ‘Morellato Gioielli da vivere’.

In addition, a jury of experts will assign a Special Prize to one of the finalists.

The award ceremony will be held during the RomeFilmFest, where the winners will have the opportunity to parade down the red carpet alongside major performers and directors.

‘Over the last few seasons the web has become the most free-thinking and inventive training ground for the short-form narrative using images and sound’, says Mario Sesti. ‘This year we want to start exploring the endless ocean of material offered by the web, to see if we discover something that bears a resemblance to cinema. At the same time we have started a competition that will enable anyone – from Alaska to Pakistan – to take part in an international film festival simply by uploading their own short film onto one of the Internet’s most visited websites’.

Umberto Luciani, Marketing and Content Manager at MySpace Italia, declared that ‘The collaboration created with the Fondazione Cinema per Roma goes to further prove the role MySpace has been performing for some time now in the promotion and exploitation of various forms of video expression’.

Massimo Carraro, CEO of the initiative’s partner, Morellato, explains: ‘Morellato entered into partnership with the RomeFilmFest and MySpace because it fits in perfectly with our company philosophy. Its innovative and unique competition that gives each and every one of us the chance to be protagonists, opens up the frontiers of cinema towards the future’.