My short film Der Ostwind is no longer available on Netflix or iTunes. As part of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival I had the opportunity to make my film available on the 2007 Sundance Online Festival and iTunes. The latter required an agreement with Mediastile Inc who would act as the distributor for iTunes.  The Mediastile deal started off well the first three months, but that all quickly changed.  No download reports, no royalty checks, no returned emails, no returned phone calls.  Then one day I stumbled across my own film, Der Ostwind, on Netflix . . . which I thought was cool, but odd that I was not informed.  Simply put it has been a communication nightmare.  My favorite was getting a text from Mediastile CEO Jason Turner saying, “I’m calling you right now.” He never called and I think he did that to me twice.  I never got any answers.

Luckily, Sundance stepped in and provided some answers.  They told me that Sundance is now in litigation with Mediastile and I should pursue my own legal council if I want to ever see the royalties they owe me.  They also said that they have revoked Mediastile‘s right to use the Sundance logo on any of the films they distribute . . . and thus Der Ostwind is no longer on iTunes or Netflix anymore.

If you are interested, you can read a more detailed account about Sundance‘s nightmare with Mediastile here: indieWire: Sundance Halts Online Fest Initiative; Short Filmmakers Kept in the Dark by Aggregator Mediastile by Eric Kohn

As for the Der Ostwind DVD . . . I really really really want to print an official DVD of Der Ostwind and all my other short films.  Over the last five years I’ve had a lot of requests to make Der Ostwind and/or The Promethean available on DVD, so I figured there was probably enough interest to warrant it.  But on top of that I think it would just be so cool to have a nicely printed DVD of all my student work.  It’s a dream of mine, it really is.  A year or so ago I worked out all the rights with BYU, secured some investors (read my parents), and started working to put together a DVD.  We shot interview footage for a making of video, we recoded commentary, we got everything we needed for a sweet DVD chalk full of special features.

Then tragedy hit.  The hard drive, and the back up hard drive, that had all my files including the actual film of Der Ostwind got wiped out in one fell swoop.  I can’t really talk about it, it’s still too painful.  Needless to say all the wind I had in my sails for making a DVD was lost with those hard drives, and I haven’t really reattempted it since then.  But I really really really want to make a DVD of my films and someday I will.  When I do it won’t be the same special feature repleate DVD I had planned, but it will still be way cool.

So right now Der Ostwind is not available anywhere online, that I know of, and there are no immediate plans to make a DVD . . . wonderful!

I’ll let you know when this changes.