RESFEST was by the 2000s the most prominent digital film festival

Digital film festivals

Digital film festivals emerged in the mid to late 1990s, to showcase artists and filmmakers utilizing the nascent tools of desktop digital filmmaking....

 in North America. It was a leading global showcase of new digital filmmakers alongside England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

's Onedotzero

Onedotzero

onedotzero is a contemporary, digital arts organisation with a remit to promote innovation across all forms of moving image and motion arts....

 festival. The festival toured the world and in 2005 travelled to 35 cities in the USA, Canada, UK, Japan, Australia, Brazil and in various cities in Europe, Asia and Africa. A large part of the festival's latter content focused on cutting-edge music videos and short films, and directors like Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry

Michel Gondry is an Academy Award winning filmmaker, whose works include being a commercial director, music video director, and a screenwriter. He is noted for his inventive visual style and manipulation of mise en scène. - Life and career :...

, Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze

Spike Jonze is an American director, producer and actor, whose work includes music videos, commercials, film and television...

, Chris Cunningham

Chris Cunningham

Chris Cunningham is an English music video film director and video artist. He was born in Reading, Berkshire in 1970 and grew up in Lakenheath, Suffolk....

 and Jonathan Glazer

Jonathan Glazer

Jonathan Glazer is an English director of films, commercials and music videos.-Biography:After studying theatre design at Nottingham Trent University, Glazer started out directing theatre and making film and television trailers, including award-winning work for the BBC...

 all had their catalogs of work showcased at RESFEST over its 10 year run.

The film festival was founded by Jonathan Wells

Jonathan Hale Wells

Jonathan Hale Wells is the co-founder and Head of Programming of RES Media Group, which produces the global touring digital film festival, RESFest, and the digital culture publication, RES Magazine....

 after the dissolution of the Low Res

Low Res

Low Res Digital Film Festival was founded by Bart Cheever and Jonathan Wells. The first event took place in October 1995 at a small art gallery, 111 Minna St. Gallery in San Francisco’s SoMa district...

 digital film festival which he and Bart Cheever had created the year before. Cheever went on to create the DFilm digital film festival and online movie maker.

In 1997 the producers also created the digital film lifestyle magazine RES

RES (magazine)

RES was a bi-monthly magazine chronicling the best in cutting edge film, music, art, design and culture. RES was launched with a preview issue in January 1997 at the Sundance Film Festival. The full-length premiere issue debuted in August 1997 with music video directors Jonathan Dayton and Valerie...

, which was affiliated with the online media site Sputnik 7.

Both the festival and magazine stopped updating their websites in the midst of RESFEST 10, the organisation's 2006 tour, and have since been inactive. Wells has since moved to curating cultural events through his flux website.