Titular character of Marcel the Shell While festivals and online outlets still exist as two different worlds, it seems that every online mainstay wants to become a festival (see YouTube Biennial, Vimeo Festival), and every festival wants to have a presence online. We've covered Cannes and Sundance's forays, and now at the end of the yearly festival season the American Film Institute's AFI Fest has a turn with a selection of 11 shorts available through its website.

Right on the heels of Vimeo's successful celebration of itself with their own Vimeo Festival, YouTube came out last night with an exclusive event at New York's Guggenheim Museum to celebrate the best work on their site. The event was a celebration of YouTube Play, touted by the company as a "biennial of creative video.

Just stumbled upon something really cool by complete accident! Maybe I should be ashamed to call myself an "short film expert" and not have heard of this since it's in its 10th year, but Fluxus is an online film festival based out of Brazil that combines museum exhibition of short films and installations with a sophisticated online exhibition experience. What that means for us who don't live in São Paulo is that 40 current, high quality festival-circuit films are online right this moment to watch! Still from Bastien Dubois' Madagascar.

Sundance kicked off tonight in Park City, Utah. I hadn't heard any advance buzz about the 10/10 online series, a recent Sundance tradition that we covered last year, and so I sadly concluded that the festival had moved away from online distro for short films to instead focus more on its much-heralded pay per view partnership.

This year, the Sundance Film Festival will highlight an exclusive selection of 10 short films over 10 days on the iTunes Store.Beginning January 15th with the first film, Short of the Week will be reviewing each film as they're released—giving our expert advice on whether to watch it or not.