SnagFilms to premiere doc Haze simultaneously with Hamptons Film Festival

SnagFilms CEO Rick Allen recently announced that Haze, a documentary film introduced by Robin Wright Penn, will premiere simultaneously on SnagFilms and at the Hamptons International Film Festival.

With its focus on the death of a young Colorado University fraternity pledge, Gordie Bailey, due to alcohol poisoning, Haze is a documentary that explores a range of issues regarding youth culture in America and their use of alcohol, such as binge drinking, hazing, the current drinking age and peer pressure. Robin Wright Penn is a Golden Globe- and Screen Actors Guild Award-nominated actress. The 16th annual Hamptons International Film Festival starts today and runs through October 19th. SnagFilms brings the best nonfiction films to the web audience, promotes viral web distribution through virtual movie theater widgets, and engages viewers to assist charitable and community efforts. The premiere of Haze online simultaneously to its premiere at a festival is the first time there has been such a dual premiere.

“We are so thrilled to partner with SnagFilms on this unique opportunity to present Haze to the wide audience that the film deserves. It is a special film, and one that we feel strongly should be shared by both our audiences here in the Hamptons, and to as broad a population as possible. This new initiative will really allow us to fulfill that goal,” said David Nugent, Hamptons International Film Festival, Programming Director.

In addition to featuring Haze, SnagFilms will extend the Hamptons International Film Festival with Hamptons Extra – a slate of independent documentary films accepted to screen exclusively online. The titles of these films will be announced in late September, along with the festival’s full slate.

It was also announced that on October 21st, SnagFilms will be the first to offer free, ad-supported streaming of End of America, which will make its festival debut at the Hamptons Festival, and is being released in partnership with IndiePix Studios. Directed by Academy Award-nominated documentarians Annie Sundberg and Ricki Stern, The End of America is framed by Naomi Wolf’s lecture on her best-selling book of the same name. In a pivotal election year, the urgency of getting the film seen by Americans prior to November 4th made online distribution via SnagFilms the right choice over the slower roll-out of traditional windows.

SnagFilms was launched two months ago today. “In just eight weeks,” Allen told the Independent Film Week conference, “thousands of filmanthropists have donated the pixels on their websites and opened more than 10,000 online theaters that can stream for free any of the 450 films we now have in our library. This is roughly twenty times more online ‘theaters’ showing documentaries than there are brick and mortar theaters showing even the most commercially viable nonfiction films. Since launch, our widgets have been seen more than 55 million times, and our websites have each had one million page views. Americans have already spent more than two million minutes watching great movies on SnagFilms,” he said.

For more info, and to watch today’s best docs online for free, visit www.snagfilms.com.