AOL Sponsors HuffPo Film Contest

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IN AN EFFORT TO BOLSTER its online video offerings, AOL is sponsoring a film contest on HuffingtonPost.com, the blogging site founded by political pundit Arianna Huffington.

The site several weeks ago began soliciting entries for the competition, "Contagious Festival," which officially began on Feb. 1. More than 100 users so far have uploaded a clip to the site. Each month, the HuffingtonPost will bestow a "People's Choice" award on the spot that garners the most traffic, and another "Jury Prize" to the film deemed best by a panel of judges--including Huffington, AOL's Jim Bankoff, director Noah Baumbach, writer Nora Ephron, and actor John Cusack.

As of Wednesday afternoon, the most popular video was an animated spot, "Quail Hunting with Dick Cheney," that mocked the vice-president's accidental shooting this weekend of 78-year-old Harry Whittington. By Wednesday evening, the spot had garnered more than 225,000 hits.

AOL is running ads on the contest page directing visitors to a Moviefone short film site. Additionally, AOL Wednesday posted "Quail Hunting" on its own comedy section, comedy.aol.com.

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