Festival Collective Expands to Include New Viewers

Atlanta Film Festival and Comcast Expand Partnership to

Reach Viewers across Southeast 

ATLANTA, GA: Oct. 22, 2014 — The Atlanta Film Festival (ATLFF) and Comcast announced today a major expansion of the Film Festival Collective Presented by Xfinity, a program that showcases the best content in the Southeast and fosters the discovery of new production talent from around the world. The program features short films and other quality content from ten film festivals across the markets that Comcast serves. The effort now spans 13 states and is available to over 9 million Comcast customer households.

“Since May, we’ve worked to bring the best content to Comcast customers around the Southeastern United States,” said ATLFF Executive Director Christopher Escobar. “This expansion provides us with the opportunity to reach audiences outside of the region and to bring artistic voices from new festivals into the Collective.”  

Films from previous festivals in the Collective stretch across genre lines that include animation, comedy, documentary, drama, horror, sci-fi, music videos and beyond. 

The Film Festival Collective has grown to include ten festival members: the Atlanta Film Festival, The Nashville Film Festival, the Charleston International Film Festival, the Atlanta-based documentary series Homespun, the Knoxville Film Festival, the Macon Film Festival, Indie Memphis, Atlanta’s Out on Film, and the Indie Grits Film Festival. Additional festivals from the newly expanded area will be included in the coming weeks. Nearly 40 films are already represented in the Collective – a full list is available at www.filmfestivalcollective.com/films.

Content is available at no additional cost to Comcast subscribers. The program is available on both the original Comcast platform as well as the X1 platform. With X1, subscribers can access content using voice commands on their X1 remote control app. 

"Comcast has a proud tradition of supporting the arts in our communities, and we are pleased to offer this independent programming to a larger audience," said Kerry McKelvey, VP of Marketing and Sales for Comcast.  "The expansion of the Festival Collective program signals Comcast’s continued dedication to new voices and discerning viewers."

For more information about Film Festival Collective, visit www.filmfestivalcollective.com.

For more information about the Atlanta Film Festival, visit www.atlantafilmfestival.com.

About the Atlanta Film Festival

The Atlanta Film Festival, now in its fourth decade, is an Academy Award qualifying festival and one of the region’s largest and longest-running preeminent celebrations of cinema in the Southeast United States. Over 20,000 festival attendees enjoy independent, animated, documentary, and short films each year, selected from over 3,200 submissions from more than 100 countries. Atlanta Film Festival 365, the arts non-profit which produces the Atlanta Film Festival annually also schedules screenings, discussions, workshops and panels year-round to keep cinema top of mind and the art & culture community talking. Major funding for the Atlanta Film Festival is provided by the Turner Voices Foundation of Turner Broadcasting, XFINITY, and the Fulton County Board of Commissioners under the guidance of the Fulton County Arts Council.

Contact: Alex Horwitz, Comcast: alex_horwitz@cable.comcast.com, (770) 557-2803

About Comcast 

Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSA, CMCSK) (www.comcast.com) is one of the nation’s leading providers of entertainment, information and communications products and services. Comcast is principally involved in the operation of cable systems through Comcast Cable and in the development, production and distribution of entertainment, news, sports and other content for global audiences through NBCUniversal. Comcast Cable is one of the nation’s largest video, high-speed Internet and phone providers to residential and business customers. Comcast is the majority owner and manager of NBCUniversal, which owns and operates entertainment and news cable networks, the NBC and Telemundo broadcast networks, local television station groups, television production operations, a major motion picture company and theme parks.

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