EXPN.com : Tube Film Festival: Event Info

Winners' wrap up and packed houses highlight Tube Film Festival

Held in conjunction with the ESPN X Games, the first ever Tube Film Festival, unspooled to popular acclaim feature films, clips and animated shorts that captured the action of today's hottest alternative sports stars, Sunday August 20 and Monday August 21 in The Theater at Yerba Buena Center for Arts, Third and Howard Streets in San Francisco. Tube today announced festival winners and audience favorites as well as plans for next year's Festival. The X Games is owned, organized and televised by ESPN, Inc. Adobe Systems Incorporated is the official sponsor of the Tube Festival and the 2000 ESPN Summer X Games.

Chosen by the audience and a panel of judges (comprised of athletes and filmmakers), this year's winners are:

• Adobe Best Overall Film: SETH: THE HARD WAY (4 Leaf Entertainment in association with Enuf Said Productions, produced by Seth Enslow, Bryan Jordan, Bobby Williams, Erick Hilton, and Mike Shaw), a lively look at gravity-defying daredevil motocross maniac Seth Enslow.

• Adobe Best Highlight Film: SEPTEMBER SESSION (directed by Jack Johnson, produced by Kelly Slater, co-produced by Emmett Malloy), the latest surf documentary from watery wunderkind Jack Johnson.

• Adobe Best Animated Film: BILLY'S BALLOON (directed Don Hertzfeltdt), a hilarious look at a boy and his balloon.

•ComChoice Audience Favorite: MIRACLE BOY AND NYQUIST (directed by Steve Olpin, Executive produced by Kevin Foxe and Mitch Edwards, produced by Stin Anderson), an exciting look at two of the world's fiercest and most popular BMX riders Dave Mirra and Ryan Nyquist.
Check out www.comchoice.com for more information.

Audience attendance was phenomenal at this year's Festival. Sunday was a near capacity crowd in the 790-seat theatre in Yerba Buena Center for the Arts and Monday was sold-out.

Ron Semiao, ESPN vice president, programming, states: "We're ecstatic about the turnout for the first Tube Film Festival. We're already working on next year's Tube Festival and we're delighted that the first could lay such a strong foundation."

Festival co-director Ken Karn exclaimed, "The Tube was an unqualified success. It is clear action sports filmmaking is growing as an art form as well as entertainment. We are proud to show this year's best works!"

Culled from over 70 entries, all of the highest quality, the Festival offered a rush of fastpaced filmmaking and outlandish athletic skill. Continued co-director Gary Meyer, "We are thrilled at the positive response by the filmmakers, moviegoers and sport stars. ESPN is on to something, so keep an eye out for next year's Festival dates (to be announced on EXPN.com)."

Founded in 1982, Adobe Systems Incorporated (www.adobe.com) builds award-winning software solutions for Web and print publishing. Its graphic design, imaging, dynamic media, and authoring tools enable customers to create, publish and deliver visually rich content for various types of media. Headquartered in San Jose, California, Adobe is the fourth largest U.S.-based personal software company, with annual revenues exceeding $1 billion.

The Tube Film Festival ran August 20-21 at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Third and Howard Streets in San Francisco. Screenings began at 9:00 pm, admission for each night was $7.