Cinema lovers in towns like Park City, Kan., or Park City, Ill., may see movies from this year's Sundance Film Festival the same night they premiere in Park City.

For the first time ever, festival organizers and media conglomerate Rainbow Media will premiere three Sundance films on nationwide video on demand (VOD) for the next 30 days, a project that hints at the future of distribution for independent films.

"For a lot of the films that go through the festival, the most attention they receive is those 10 days for the festival," said the festival's programming director, Trevor Groth. "Now that the technology [like video on demand] is available for these films --- why not make them accessible?"

In fact, the three films that were picked for this new pay-per-view initiative, called "Direct from the Sundance Film Festival," will have a bigger potential audience than the vast majority of the festival films ever will.

Each of the VOD movies will be available beginning the night of their premiere in about 40 million homes via Comcast (the cable provider for most of Utah), Cablevision, Cox, Time Warner and satellite provider DirecTV. It costs about $7 to view each movie.

Meanwhile, Sundance officials also announced a new partnership with YouTube, in which three of this year's festival films will be available for rent through the streaming Web site's new video rental service.

Last year, VOD movies and television shows generated $1.6 billion in revenue in the U.S., not including adult video, according to the financial data analyst firm SNL Kagan. In 2009, 84.1 million American households had access to video-on-demand services.

Include the Internet as another platform to view movies digitally, and just about anyone could distribute their film worldwide with little cost.

"There are a lot of ways that people consume movies right now," said Jonathan Sehring, president of IFC Entertainment, the subsidiary of Rainbow Media that is partnering with Sundance. "The great thing about Sundance is it takes American independent cinema and creates a world awareness about it. This is one of the ways that Sundance is looking to expand the festival experience and help democratize it."

The three films picked for video on demand include "Daddy Longlegs" (Spotlight category), a drama about a divorced father taking care of his two young sons; "7 Days" (Park City at Midnight), a revenge tale of a man who tortures a murderer; and "The Shock Doctrine" (Premieres), a documentary about how capitalism is used in exploiting countries in crisis. All three also will have regular theatrical screenings at the festival throughout the week.

"We wanted to try and do something that was representative of the festival," Sehring said. "They [the films] come from three completely different sections of the festival. We're going to monitor it and learn from it, but it's the future of distribution for 95 percent of the films that go to Sundance."

John Cooper, Sundance festival director, agrees that independent films and digital distribution like VOD and the Internet is a perfect marriage for moviemakers outside the Hollywood system.

"The one question we're not asking anymore is: 'Is there a difference between the small screen and the big screen? Could something look cinematic on a small screen?'" Cooper said. "But those small screens have gotten a lot bigger."

Benny and Josh Safdi, the brother filmmakers who directed "Daddy Longlegs," are excited their film could be broadcast all over the country instead of just in cultural hot spots like New York City or Los Angeles.

"It's the wave of the future," Benny Safdi said. "You can only push against that so much, and if that's the way people are watching movies, that's what we have to do. It's a way to sort of make it more well-rounded. There are places who don't have access to this movie or will never have access to American independent movies."

Added his brother, Josh Safdi: "It was a movie made by our hearts from our hearts. I would love to discover a movie like this with my parents in my living room."

vince@sltrib.com