The Manhattan Short Film Festival is coming to Des Moines September 26, 28 and October 2 at the Des Moines Art Center. They take all their entries (this year 589) and boil them down to ten finalists. Then you get to fill out a ballot and vote for the winner that day. About a week later you can go to their website and see if your tastes conform to those of everyone else around the world who voted! Another thing that separates them from other festivals (the festival comes to you) is that  you can purchase a DVD of past films.

My only disagreement with the whole deal is all you get to see are the ten finalists. Using this year as an example, that is 579 shorts you don’t get to see. If Obi-Wan chose correctly, all well and good. But otherwise, there are a lot of shorts you’ll never see. And in past years amongst the ten finalists were some very mediocre films.