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The video sharing website, YouTube, was created in 2005 and became an overnight success. Google bought YouTube for more than $1,600,000,000 the following year. In May, YouTube announced that two billion videos were watched each day.
In June, the Guggenheim Museum in New York City announced it would hold a competition among YouTube videos. Now, the judges have chosen the top 125 videos. Mario Ritter has more.
The Guggenheim and YouTube launched the competition called “YouTube Play. A Biennial of Creative Video.” The information technology companies HP and Intel are supporting the event. 23,000 videos entered the competition. They represented 91 countries and every possible style of movie making.
The rules of the competition were few. Video makers had to be eighteen years or older. They could enter only one video. It had to be no more than ten minutes long. Any language, subject, sound, and style were considered.
Eleven people are judging the videos. They include artists, musicians, and filmmakers. Laurie Anderson is all three. She says all her art starts with a story, so she looks for a story as she judges the videos.
Other judges include the filmmaker Darren Aronofsky, the band Animal Collective, and artist and filmmaker, Shirin Neshat.
New Jersey artist Dahlia Elsayed’s video is one of the finalists. She used the camera in her computer to record herself describing her daily food desires for one month. The video is simple, short, and interesting.
A frightening, but beautiful video came from Chile. The video by Niles Atallah, Joaquin Cocina Varas, and Cristobal Leon is called “Luis.” It is an animated ghostly story of a tense, angry boy. It is very dark, but impossible to stop watching.
“Mars to Jupiter” is a video from Canada by Sterling Pache. It is about a survivor of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. The video explores how her past still haunts her.
Other chosen videos are from France, Spain, Taiwan, Australia, and Israel. Almost thirty countries are represented. You can see them if you link to YouTube Play from our website at voaspecialenglish.com.
People can also see the 125 videos at the Guggenheim museums in New York; Bilbao, Spain; Berlin, Germany; and Venice, Italy.
On October 21, the YouTube Play judges will announce the final twenty winning videos at a special event at the Guggenheim in New York. The videos will be on view there until October 24.