Calendar – Past Event

If you’re a filmmaker with an idea for a three-minute nonfiction film around the theme of invention and innovation, then it’s time to get to work! We’re giving away $200,000 in cash prizes to the top five entries in our Focus Forward Filmmaker Challenge, with $100,000 going to the Grand Prize Winner. (Yes, you read that right.) Submissions open April 23rd, 2012. Winners will be announced at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah. Details below.

FOCUS FORWARD | FILMMAKER CHALLENGE

CREATIVE BRIEF

Focus Forward films highlight exceptional people and world-changing ideas that are impacting the course of human development, changing our lives for the better. We are looking for professional quality 3-minute stories about visionaries and thinkers and in some cases everyday folks who have brought a quantum leap to human progress by their efforts and inventions. Your film may encompass anything from jaw-dropping medical advancements to renewable energy breakthroughs; open-source architecture to the development of wireless technologies in Third World countries; computer programming wizardry to sci-fi-worthy robotics; or any other sphere of art and knowledge that inspires you. We’re especially interested in the accomplishments of inventors, engineers, educators, surgeons, scientists, techies, artists, programmers, backyard tinkerers—i.e. anyone making a difference, utilizing their skills and vision to innovate, share their work, and help sow the seeds of a brighter future.

Submitted films must be three minutes in length, suitable for all screens and all audiences. Be sure it is clear in your film what the innovation/invention is (and/or the person responsible for it), as well as what its significant human impact has been. These films can be narrated or purely observational, interview-based or expressionistic; HD, film, animation, and mixed formats are all welcome. Be creative—think cinematically. A selection of Focus Forward films will be distributed and shown all over the world and up to 100 semi-finalists will be featured online at www.focusforwardfilms.com in the fall of 2012. The Jury Prize finalists will be announced in December.

Click the 'Films' tab above to see examples. New films by our award-winning professional filmmakers are now available and will be added regularly.

PRIZING

1st Place (the Grand Prize): $100,000
2nd Place: $50,000
3rd Place: $30,000
4th Place: $10,000
5th Place: $10,000
In addition to the cash prizes the Top 100 Focus Forward Filmmaker Challenge Films will be presented for audience viewing and voting on vimeo.com/focusforwardfilms and www.focusforwardfilms.com in Fall 2012. The Top 10 films according to the number of audience votes will be recognized on the websites as audience choice films.

All submissions must be uploaded between April 23, 2012 and October 7, 2012.

Submit now!

See official rules.