Magnolia Pictures announced acclaimed filmmaker Wayne Wang’s new film THE PRINCESS OF NEBRASKA will make its world premiere on YouTube on Friday, October 17, 2008. The free release on YouTube’s recently launched YouTube Screening Room (http://www.youtube.com/ytscreeningroom), a channel dedicated to premium film content, is part of a larger distribution plan, which launched with Magnolia Pictures’ national theatrical release on September 19 of Wang’s companion film A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS. Magnolia, Cinetic Rights Management and YouTube worked together to plan the parallel distribution strategy.

Magnolia Pictures’ Ray Price stated, “The internet’s ability to provide free streaming video is going to radically redefine independent film’s access and availability to its audience. It provides a new platform, which can free us from the ‘Top Ten’ mentality in the same way that FM radio did for the music business.”

Filmmaker Wayne Wang added, “THE PRINCESS OF NEBRASKA is about a young woman from
China who tries to locate her identity through different kinds of new media. The piece was shot with this kind of mentality with various kinds of easily accessible digital sources. I am very excited that the distribution will be consistent with the way the piece was conceived and produced!”

“For years, filmmakers have asked me when a veteran icon would release a new work for free, online,” said Matt Dentler of Cinetic Rights Management. “That time is now, and we’re thrilled to be part of this exciting distribution strategy.”

THE PRINCESS OF NEBRASKA and A THOUSAND YEARS OF GOOD PRAYERS are both adapted from a collection of short stories by Granta prize winning author Yiyun Li. They mark the seventh and eighth of Wang’s Asian-themed films that explore the bonds of family and Chinese identity in the modern world, making up one of the largest bodies of introspective work in independent film over the last 25 years.

In THE PRINCESS OF NEBRASKA, Sasha (Ling Li) is a foreign exchange student who finds herself pregnant. She’s the new generation of China, unmoored to traditions and history. As she says, “In America I learned a new phrase, ‘moving on.’ Tomorrow I can start a new page.” She travels from Nebraska to San Francisco to get an abortion, but in her exploration of the city in the next 24 hours she learns that turning a new page doesn’t necessarily mean turning your back on the past.

PRINCESS OF NEBRASKA YouTube exclusive trailer