YouTube is about to make it a lot easier for independent filmmakers to reach fans by partnering up with the Sundance Film Festival to make five indie films from the 2009 and 2010 festivals available for rental starting this Friday, Jan. 22 through Sunday, Jan. 31.
Unfortunately only users in the United States will be able to view the award-winning movies. According to YouTube’s blog, an additional “collection of rental videos from other U.S. partners across different industries, including health and education, will be made available in the weeks ahead.”
The five films that will be available for rental are The Cove andChildren of Invention from 2009 as well as Homewrecker, One Too Many Mornings, and Bass Ackwards from 2010. Watch the trailers after the jump.
In an experiment to show how quickly misinformation and conspiracy theories can spread across the Internet, German broadcaster RTL posted on YouTube last week a video that appears to be Michael Jackson emerging from a coroners van.
“We wanted to show how easily users can be manipulated on the Internet with hoax videos,” spokeswoman Heike Schultz of Cologne-based RTL told The Associated Press. “Therefore, we created this video of Michael Jackson being alive, even though everybody knows by now that he is dead — and the response was breathtaking.”
Jackson died in Los Angeles June 25.
The poorly lit video shows what appears to be the King of Pop emerging from a coroners van inside of a gated parking garage with another person.
Although the video was only posted for one day, it received 880,000 hits.
