"Researchers Create Beating Heart in Laboratory" -- that's the lead story for Sunday, January 13, 2008 on Physorg.com. "We just took nature's own building blocks to build a new organ," says Harald C. Ott, M.D., co-investigator of the study and a former research associate in the center for cardiovascular repair, who now works at Massachusetts General Hospital, in the article. "When we saw the first contractions we were speechless."

In areas where businesses begin to rely on technology the resultant acceleration is frightening.

Look down two headlines and read "Netflix Expands Internet Viewing Option." Currently, there is a gold rush on the film industry as net giants prepare to mine deep, from the top of the box office down through the long-tail of consumer demand, to see how much money can be made on every last snippet of celluloid socked away in company vaults. Much like the industries of music, the figures are going to be astronomical and everyone wants a piece of the pie. This time around the companies involved don't want to lose their shirts the way the industries of music claim they have. The net is fast and responds to no set laws, it's more an organism than a corporation ever will be, and very soon that organism could bleed the film corporations like a ravenous leech.

Music executives blame technology, or more precisely the Internet, for nearly killing the industry of music. Might the industry of film be far behind and will the film festivals be the canary in the coalmine?

To see where we've come from, it's good to look at the latest industry to experience the Internet revolution, the aforementioned industry of music. What quickly died on the vine once the product could quickly and easily be shuffled from one computer to the next without ever setting foot inside a Tower Records? Tower Records. With that in mind, it becomes easy to see why the large physical video chains are all focusing on gaining a net presence, Netflix is moving outside its USPS film delivery paradigm and it's rumored that production companies are making deals with the likes of Apple.

Where would film festivals sit within this music analysis? It could sit alongside the standard film theater outlet as being similar to a music concert if only because all three are community based gatherings that continue to thrive regardless of the Net or how many college kids pass around e-music like a shot of Jagermeister with a quarter in the glass.

Film festivals and the areas they touch are large and ever growing. The film Juno is born out of the film festival circuit via a well-executed production and marketing campaign by Fox Searchlight, an arm of Fox Pictures and the Fox monstrosity owned by Rupert Murdoch. That, for the most part, is the new face of so called "indie cinema." Why could it not just as easily have been ushered in via the Net?

By the current model, it would be hard to imagine a film hitting the theaters after making the rounds on the Net. For this reality to work, the theater-going experience would have to not be included in the film production money-stream. Much like music concerts, dollars to doughnuts, the theaters will survive the oncoming e-onslaught, and where there are theaters there will be midnight movies, film revivals, and film festivals.

The good Dr. Hunter Thompson once said he became a journalist because they were the only people he liked to drink with. I could say the same for filmmakers. They like to celebrate and they work harder than nearly any other industry I've ever known. Given a chance to attend a festival equals a chance to celebrate. That alone is reason enough that festivals will survive. Christopher Doyle showed up at one particular fest-based interview to a sold-out theater carrying a 6-pack, and his handlers said it wasn't nearly the first of the afternoon. He spoke intelligently about his film work and collaboration with various directors, and the film-loving audiences ate it up. Sitting seven rows from the stage I can say with certainty it could never have been experienced the same via TV or video screen.

If the film canary isn't film festivals you have to think it would be the large outlet services that rent or sell films. All the mom-and-pop video stores and Blockbuster, no matter who Blockbuster hires, are poised to face the brunt of the coming internet/film merger. As long as we have a need for congregation and shared experiences, theaters will survive, and where there are theaters there will be festivals.

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