Q: What do Michael Stipe, Harmony Korine, Damon Albarn, Billy Zane, a Spanish paperclip maker, a backyard wrestler, a baby and Duchamp’s urinal all have in common?

A: They are all part of the Stop For A Minute project.

Stop for a Minute is a cross media project conceived and produced by the folks over at Dazed & Confused magazine, in partnership with FilmFour LAB. Starting January 2nd, a new and exclusive sixty-second film will be premiered each day for a month on the new Stop For A Minute site. A day after premiering online, each of the 31 films will be archived and broadcast from FilmFour's online video channel.

FilmFour.com is also hosting a Stop For A Minute forum that enables viewers to interact with one another in debates and comments regarding the themes raised within each thought-provoking short.

Film-Makers, have something to say?

Stop For A Minute unites a global creative community of filmmakers, musicians, writers, designers and artists to produce powerful, unconventional and innovative one-minute films to make the viewer stop for a minute. Feature film directors like Harmony Korine, Andrew Kotting and Roman Coppola, artists like Damon Almond and Cameron Jamie, musicians like Damon Albarn and Howie B and new media designers like Deepend have made an explosive showcase of films to provoke, entertain and download.

The international audience watching these shorts will be invited to contribute their own Stop For A Minute films, ten of which will be selected for broadcast on line during February and March 2001. In order to help filmmakers avoid having to individually gain rights to the music that accompanies their prospective works, a choice of one minute music tracks, composed by leading DJs, music producers and song writers such as Bobby Gillespie, A Guy Called Gerald and Kevin Yost will also be available to download and use as soundtracks for films submitted to Stop For A Minute.

While Stop For A Minute seems to place no limitations on the content of contributed shorts, Robin Gutch, head of the FilmFour lab summed up the goal of this creative project in a single statement: "Stop For a Minute slices into the predictable and conventional with a razor; compressed moments of digital film making which are arresting, beautiful, funny or just straight from the heart". The same call for freedom of expression from a new generation of indie filmmakers was reinforced when Jefferson Hack, editor of Dazed & Confused stated that Stop For A Minute is all about, "Personal films by personal film makers [that] make you stop and think".

Stop For A Minute promises to provide high-profile exposure to filmmakers and videographers that may have previously been unknown. So what are you waiting for? Rip out that Mini-DV camera and capture one hot minute of life!