Digital film festivals emerged in the mid to late 1990s, to showcase artists and filmmakers utilizing the nascent tools of desktop digital filmmaking.
Digital films and animation are now commonly found in mainstream film festivals, but these events laid the groundwork for pioneering works in the area as useful nexus points for digital artists and debates on digital distribution and creation.
The earliest digital film festivals included the MiniDV Festival (now called The Digital Video Festival) in Los Angeles, Low Res (later to split into the DFilm and RESFest events), onedotzero, and Exploding Cinema (the International Film Festival Rotterdam digital cinema sidebar). Other digital film festivals include .Mov (Japan), Darklight (Ireland), Bifilm (Germany), MP4Fest at Silver Lake Film Festival (Los Angeles, CA), l0110 (India), Clone (Norway), as well as onedotzero's international network of events across 60 cities worldwide, among others.
These festivals stretch the traditional boundaries of 'film festivals' by including hybrid works from internet art, web animation, computer and video gaming, streaming video, music video, etc.
In 2008, the Paso Digital Film Festival set new standards and for the past 6 years has moved between #1 and #3 on all the major search engines when you enter "digital film festivals". The Event was held in November 2008, and was attended by the likes of Clint Eastwood and 20 people from Eastwood's film company Malpaso including his Academy Award winning editor Joel Cox, also attending was Sir Nigel Sinclair, Cass Warner the granddaughter of Jack Warner, musicians Johnny Rivers, Ramblin Jack Elliott, Kyle Eastwood (Clint's son), TV actors Gary Conway and Max Gail, Kevin Bacon and his band the Bacon Brothers, and many others. The festival included a day of 3-D with some of the early pioneers in 3-D from LA attend and show independent 3D movies. Elements of the festival was streamed live online from the website.
In 2013, the Digital Media Festival in Silicon Valley set another standard with a full shift from the world of "film" to the new age of "Digital Media" and staged in the Digital Capitol of the world Silicon Valley, California. Attended by some great filmmakers from San Francisco and Los Angeles, including Cass Warner, from the great Warner Brothers family, Len Dell'Amico long time music video producer working with the greats and known as "the Grateful Dead's Video Guy", author and photographer Chris Felver, author and Stanford U. professor Fred Turner, actor Max Gail and others..