Kickstarter-Funded Film "Inocente" Wins Academy Award

Some great things have passed through the doors at Kickstarter, including a few clever gadgets. However, a documentary short film that was successfully funded back in July of last year, Inocente, has won an Academy Award, which makes it the first time ever that a Kickstarter-funded film has received such an accolade.Inocente tells the story of a 15-year-old homeless girl from California who dreams of becoming an artist. The film's creators raised $52,527 from a total of 294 backers on their Kickstarter page, narrowly achieving their $50,000 goal. The film ended up winning the "Best Documentary Short" category at last night's Oscars.

Co-director Seth Fine says that Kickstarter "really helped galvanize a community," and "it helped fund a bunch of the film and kept us going through post-production. It's a great outlet for films especially for documentaries." Other crowd-sourced films, such as Kings Point and Buzkashi Boys, also received nominations for an Academy Award.

While Inocente became the first-ever Kickstarter-funded film to win an Oscar, Kickstarter says that this year's nominees actually marks "the fourth, fifth and sixth Kickstarter projects to be nominated for Oscars," with Incident in New Baghdad, Sun Come Up, and The Barber of Birmingham being the first three.

[via Mashable]