FirstGlance Film Fests welcomes you to our inaugural online short contest!!

As digital technology becomes better and the prices go down on equipment, we have found that we receive more festival worthy entries than ever before in our history, and unfortunately due to the costs of producing a real world festival, we cannot accommodate all the films we feel could play at our events, so we have come up with what we believe is a new approach to getting added visibility to those short films.

We started this process a few years back however the technology wasn't ready for the concept, so with the help of B-Side, we are offering a virtual theater experience to the filmmakers and the viewers of this event.
The Short Online Contest is an open contest for anyone who wants to view and vote on their favorite short films online, however with the ability to register viewers the contest is closed to a general public audience, like Youtube or many of the other open platforms. This keeps the films integrity intact, as we are not distributing the films, we are showing them in an environment that only registered members can take part in the event, similar to having to purchase a ticket to get into our real world events, but entrance into the online contest is FREE to those who register.

The contest will consist of a four week run up until the opening night of the FirstGlance Film Fest 11 Philadelphia event. The winner of the Short Online Contest will be awarded a prize package approximately valued at $1000.00 and will be screened at our Closing Night Screening!!

We look forward to bringing viewers a wide assortment of great films to view, from animation, narratives and documentaries from student and professional filmmakers...and look forward to growing this event alongside our successful offline events we present to the public twice a year!!

Congratulations and thank you for taking part in our first year, and we look forward to continuing our effort to bring great truly indie films to both the big screen and the small screen!!

Thank you
FirstGlance Staff

Welcome to FirstGlance Film Fest Philadelphia 11!

FirstGlance™ Film festivals began in 1996 in the basement of a small theater in Center City Philadelphia.We started as a small theatre company in Philadelphia that wanted to help fellow filmmakers get their projects shown in a public venue for others to enjoy. It’s mission was a one time weekend to show projects that might otherwise not be seen by moviegoers in the Philadelphia area. With a rented video projector and a bunch of large screen TV’s, we had a successful weekend showing about 20 projects to about 150 people. After the event we received multiple calls and emails from filmmakers and attendees. The FirstGlance™ Film Festival was born. FirstGlance™ decided to move forward and make its festival an annual event. With filmmaker interest, our sister festival opened in Burbank California in 2000 to a similar audience in a 35 seat screening room and has also become a growing annual event.