Vimeo today announced the next evolution of its Staff Picks channel, which was established in 2008 and features content hand-picked by Vimeo team members highlighting excellence in digital filmmaking. The platform announced today that it is transforming its Staff Picks channel into a year-long online film festival, which will hand out new laurels every week, month, and year.
The already existing Staff Pick laurel — of which Vimeo bestows roughly 1,000 annually — will continue to exist, but will be joined by new Best Of The Month and Best Of The Year prizes, the company announced. Now, each month, Vimeo will highlight an hour’s worth of films and videos across a variety of genres for a total of 120 films selected per year comprising 12 total hours of programming. At the end of the year, Vimeo will name overall winners within several core categories.
At the same time that it announced the new awards paradigm, Vimeo unveiled an initiative dubbed Staff Pick Premieres — a weekly film premiere of a pre-selected Staff Pick. Vimeo says it will promote Premieres via editorial coverage and marketing support on and off its platform. The Vimeo team will accept open submissions from any films that have played at an Oscar-qualifying event within the past two years.
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“We’re excited to continue to honor and elevate our Staff Pick filmmakers with two new levels of prestige, while also making the channel a must-watch for audiences tuning in weekly to the new Premieres programming,” said Vimeo general manager Peter Gerard in a statement. Over 10,000 total works — in categories including comedy, drama, animation, documentary, action sports, adventure, and music videos — have been awarded Staff Pick honors since the program’s inception, according to Vimeo.
The first Staff Pick Premiere from Vimeo is the Danny DeVito-directed short film Curmudgeons, which debuted earlier this year at the Tribeca Film Festival and is about a grumpy 80-year-old man and his unlucky-in-love granddaughter. You can check it out below. Future Staff Pick Premieres for the next four weeks will include: These C*cksucking Tears, Partners, Night Of The Slasher, and Burnout.
