MUMBAI: Tribeca Enterprises and the Sundance Institute have been experimenting with various ideas to develop a credible distribution network for independent films, exploring all kinds of possibilities offered by the emerging and fast evolving digital technology.

Tribeca Enterprises plans to create its own movie distribution arm called Tribeca Films to take its films to American audiences. On the other hand, Sundance nstitute is also putting in place a year-round strategy for the digital distribution of independent films that will involve its partners.

The Sundance programme will focus on facilitating distribution while filmmakers retain ownership of their work while Tribeca Films will also acquire films for distribution like any other conventional distribution company.

These are attempts to fill in the void left behind by the disappearance of specialty film distribution arms of major studios that did not find it worthwhile to pump in money in their subsidiaries.

Tribeca and Sundance will use their brand name to keep the cost of marketing and promotion down. There are still a great number of cynics who are not sure if these efforts will work or not.

People think that the Tribeca model may work since it is backed by American Express and LodgeNet, a VoD service that reaches out to about 1.8 million hotel rooms in North America.