Matt Hanson

Matt Hanson, director, producer and founder of the Visual Intelligence Agency, has set himself an ambitious goal, namely the production of the feature film “A Swarm of Angels” using the Open Movie principle. The budget of 1.5 million euro will be helped along by roughly 50,000 community members who will in turn have a say in all project phases of the film. When complete, the film will be broadcast on the Internet – for free of course.

Biography
Matt Hanson is a film futurist; a writer and filmmaker described as an "international film visionary" by Screen International magazine, and recently listed in a special report on Revolutionaries by Forbes as among "Ten people who could change the world". An expert in new moving image forms, he has created a series of projects which explore cinema's future, including A Swarm of Angels, onedotzero, and various book projects.

Current project A Swarm of Angels, is a groundbreaking endeavour to fund, film, and distribute, a feature film using the Internet and all-digital technologies. It is a new kind of entertainment community bridging the gap between filmmaker and fan.

Previously, he founded the massively influential onedotzero digital film festival in 1996 at the dawn of digital filmmaking, which he directed until 2002. The festival quickly became the largest event of it's kind in the world with an international touring programme that included Europe, Asia and North America. At his previous production company he was responsible for producing and commissioning award-winning projects, including over 50 short films, and two terrestrial TV series (for Channel 4, UK).

Hanson has written a series of digital-age cinema books including The End of Celluloid: film futures in the digital age, Sci-Fi Moviescapes, Motion Blur and Reinventing Music Video. He was also a lead contributer for On Air: A visual history of MTV.

Hanson consults on new moving image trends and new entertainment models through his company, V.I.A. He lives in Brighton, England, and is an Academy member of IADAS.