YouTube has introduced a new feature: Screening Room, an area of the site devoted exclusively to selected independent films.

The Screening Room will feature four short films every two weeks, as well as the occasional full-length feature. The first several slates of films are chockablock with recognizable names and Academy Award-nominated filmmakers, but as the program continues, YouTube expects to include films submitted to a kind of cinema slush pile, to keep "You" in its name.

Don't think this project will grind the coffee industry to a halt as Starbucks baristas everywhere hang up their aprons and get out their Handicams.

Unveiled at the Henry Fonda Theater on Hollywood Boulevard last week, The Screening Room's tightly orchestrated debut was mostly flash and funky hors d'oeuvres.

Still, watching an hour of fine films in a historic Hollywood theater, all under the YouTube banner, was a strong sign that the site is no longer just a place to watch hedgehog videos.

The first four films showcased the creative flexibility of the short form and the way it nicely lends itself to bite-size online viewing. "The Danish Poet," an animated modern fairy tale by Canada's Torill Kove, won the 2007 Oscar for best animated short, and the mind-bending puppet opera "Love and War" won Fredrik Emilson an award in the same category at last year's Los Angeles Film Festival.

Miranda July's "Are You the Favorite Person of Anybody?," starring John C. Reilly, represented the excellent quarterly DVD magazine Wholphin, and Rob Pearlstein's "Our Time Is Up," starring Kevin Pollak, was nominated for an Oscar in 2006.

After the screening, the filmmakers discussed the potential upside of films on YouTube.

"Typically a short film has quite a short life — if you're lucky, a year or two," Kove said. "And I think this is a really good way to prolong that."