SnagFilms To Feature “Holy Land Hardball” As The Fifth And Final Film In Its SummerFest Limited-Time Showing of Unreleased Documentaries

SnagFilms announced that “Holy Land Hardball,” winner of the Audience Award for Best Documentary at the 2008 Boston Jewish Film Festival, will serve as the fifth installment for its SummerFest series. Beginning today, and for one week only, “Holy Land Hardball” will be available online at SnagFilms.com and throughout the SnagFilms network (including on Hulu.com, AOL.com and Fancast.com.)

“Holy Land Hardball” premieres on SnagFilms after a highly successful festival run in which it also was an Official Selection at the Silver Docs AFI/Discovery Channel Documentary Festival, Palm Beach 2008 Jewish Film Festival, and the Atlanta, Philadelphia and Denver 2009 Jewish Film Festivals.

SnagFilms brings the best nonfiction films to the web audience, promotes viral web distribution through virtual movie theater widgets, and engages viewers to assist in charitable and community efforts. Taking its mission one step further with SummerFest, SnagFilms has been hosting one-week screenings of previously unreleased documentaries before they head for theatrical or television release.

“Holy Land Hardball” follows a diverse group of players and executives as they attempt to create the first-ever professional baseball league in the Middle East. The film explores the passionate attempt led by Larry Baras, a bagel maker from Boston with no previous sports management experience, to bring a baseball league to Israel, where professional baseball has never existed. Baras and his team face countless obstacles before Opening Day, from a skeptical Israeli media to malfunctions in stadium construction … to explaining to a group of “drafted” players from the Dominican Republic that their pro career will begin nearly 6000 miles from Fenway Park. “Holy Land Hardball” depicts the madcap journey that Baras and his league endure as they scramble to make it to Opening Day.

“Just as the Major League Baseball pennant races heat up, we’re celebrating the end of our SummerFest homestand with Holy Land Hardball. It’s not just baseball fans who will warm to an unlikely cross-cultural attempt to bring America’s game to a part of the world where 5,000 years of recorded history had yet to include a scorecard,” said SnagFilms CEO Rick Allen. “The opening pitch of SummerFest was The Entrepreneur, a tale of Malcolm Bricklin’s single-minded vision to start a car company from scratch – and we end the series with another American entrepreneur, Larry Baras, creating the Israel Baseball League with a rag-tag group of former US college players and MLB-ready Dominicans. Unlikely triumphs are regularly celebrated at SnagFilms, where SummerFest has let us liberate some of the best of festival-screened documentaries and bring them to the full online audience before they head into theatrical or TV release. With 850 films in our library and growing every week, we will keep the spirit of summer going throughout the year – but you can only catch Holy Land Hardball on the SnagFilms network, and only through August 27.”

“‘Holy Land Hardball’ has been a labor of love that we are extremely proud of and we’re thrilled it was selected to be part of SnagFilms’ inaugural SummerFest. This is a remarkable opportunity to bring our film to a limitless audience,” said Producer/Directors Erik Kesten and Brett Rapkin.

About SnagFilms

SnagFilms features free ad-supported viewing of more than 840 award-winning titles from some of the greatest names in documentary film production and distribution. Since its launch in July 2008, SnagFilms’ library has been featured on over 1 billion web pageviews, via more than 25,000 web pages, including throughout the AOL channels, and the websites of The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and Politico, hundreds of blogs, and thousands of social network pages. OVGuide named SnagFilms a Top Site of 2008 and MovieMaker Magazine named SnagFilms to its annual list of “50 Best Websites for Moviemakers.”

indieWIRE, the 13-year old leading news, information and networking site for independent-minded filmmakers, the industry and moviegoers alike, has been a vital part of SnagFilms since its acquisition in August, 2008.

The company was founded by digital entrepreneur, documentary film producer, professional sports teams’ owner and philanthropist Ted Leonsis, and is additionally backed by AOL co-founder and Revolution LLC Chairman, Steve Case; philanthropist and former digital executive Jean Case; operating executive and philanthropic venture capitalist Miles Gilburne; and a group led by Ted and Jim Pedas, founders of Circle Films

Contacts

SnagFilms
Noah Black, 202-295-8797
noah {at} snagfilms(.)com