Vimeo Announces Winners of Inaugural 2010 Vimeo Awards at NYC Event

Online video sharing site Vimeo®, an operating business of IAC [NASDAQ: IACI]tonight announced the winners of the Vimeo Awards at a gala awards ceremony hosted by Ze Frank at the SVA Theater in New York City.

“We developed the Vimeo Festival + Awards to recognize the people behind the most original creative videos onthe Internet and give them a venue to learn from and inspire each other,” said Blake Whitman, Co-Director of theVimeo Festival + Awards. “We received such incredible enthusiasm for this inaugural event, and the quality ofthe work that people have submitted has been incredible. The Vimeo Awards is a clear reflection of the influenceand growth of high quality video available on the Internet.”
Submissions spanned the spectrum from traditional filmmaking to the use of emerging technologies. Theinspirational winners in the nine categories are:

A distinguished panel of judges—including M.I.A., David Lynch, Roman Coppola, Ted Hope, Lucy Walker, andMorgan Spurlock, to name a few— chose the winners from more than 6,500 entries submitted from around theworld. Legendary cult Director David Lynch, who judged the Experimental Category of the Festival commented,"The quality of films I watched for the Vimeo Festival was A Number One.”

Roman Coppola, film Director and founder and owner of The Directors Bureau, who judged the Music VideoCategory of the Festival added, “There is some really inventive stuff out there and I appreciated having a windowinto the creative work that people are producing.”

Vimeo Award for Best Video: “Last Minutes with ODEN” by Eliot Rausch chronicles the last minutes of a dog,Oden, who loses his struggle with cancer. It is a deeply personal story, told from the perspective of Oden’s ownerJason Wood. The film was shot using a Canon 7D by Directors of Photography Luke Korver and Matt Taylor.
Vimeo awarded them with the Best Video Award along with a grant of $25,000 for the purpose of making a new,original work.

Morgan Spurlock, a judge in the documentary category said, “I am so happy to take part in this acknowledgementof independent filmmakers from around the world. It is definitely time for the online creative community to becelebrated.”

Jeremy Boxer, Co-Director of the Vimeo Festival + Awards reflected on the Best Video winner, “‘Last Minuteswith ODEN’ is one of those rare, intimate shorts that leads with its heart and soul. The film has been crafted withsuperb skill and is a testament to the new generation of creators that use small cameras to tell personal tales. Weare thrilled that this project has been selected as our overall winner and recipient of the first Vimeo Awards filmmaker grant.”

Honorary Awards for Digital Maverick, spotlighting an individual for pioneering spirit in the world of onlinevideo, went to the Neistat Brothers, who have been making films and posting them online for the past decade. The Feature Presentation award, honoring the vanguard and innovative release of unique feature film online,went to Star Wars Uncut (2010 Interactive Emmy winner), which took an iconic film and the online videocommunity to collaborate in a way that has not been seen before.