Flickers of the Future
What is Flickers of the Future?
Flickers of the Future calls on young filmmakers to tell a different story - one where humans and planet thrive together.
It is a competition for UK filmakers and scriptwriters under the age of 25 to create a human story of a sustainable future. It embraces the challenge of creating content powerful enough to cut through to popular culture, without relying on the drama of dystopian narratives.
Why?
The way that we depict the future plays a critical part in how it unfolds, and research shows that the bleak dystopias that films are currently portraying create fear, denial and passivity. Creative focus has been on heroes dragging the remaining few through soulless high-tech nightmares that viewers struggle to relate to.
We are left to watch Blue Planet, sip our soya lattes through paper straws and hope something will save us from apocalyptic wastelands and robot takeovers. We need content that uses humour and feel-good storylines to inspire us all to strive for a very different future.
Flickers of the Future will support young content creators to create the most important drama of our generation in a way that creates rapid, radical change.
Our plan
The competition will open for submissions on 7th October 2019 and close 31st December 2019. UK filmmakers who are under 25 are invited to submit a short treatment showing how they plan to tell a human story of what it means to live sustainably.
Shortlisted concepts will be judged by our Expert Panel, youth audiences and representatives from major Broadcasters. The winning story will be supported though production with funding and guidance from our Expert Panel .
To promote the competition and educate early career film makers about sustainability, we will host free half day workshops at six film schools around the UK and deliver an online version. The workshops will focus on sustainability in filmmaking and will support entrants to submit quality applications.
Visit this website in October for full details about our workshops and how to apply to the competition.
Our Expert Panel
Our Expert Panel
PROFESSOR TIM JACKSON (& CUSP TEAM), Director of the Centre for Understanding Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP), University of Surrey
PROFESSOR TIM KASSER, Author & Professor of Psychology, Knox university
VANESSA TIMMER, Senior Research Fellow at Utrecht University, Executive Director of OneEarth
DR DENISE BADEN, Associate Professor of Sustainable Business & Founder of Green Stories
KEVIN MACDONALD, Director, Writer & Producer
SAM RICE-EDWARDS, Editor & Owner, The Assembly Room
JACQUES PERETTI, Investigative reporter, author and presenter
NARESH RAMCHANDANI, Do the Green Thing
ANDREW ROBINSON, Green Sparks
RICHARD WEBB, Film and TV Producer
GRAHAM SMITH, Grand Scheme Media
JEREMY MATHIEU, BBC Sustainability Advisor
JAMES WALLMAN, Author, Journalist, Activist and Keynote Speaker
SARAH WOODS, Playwright, Lecturer and Campaigner
KATE DALE, Head of Campaigns Sport England, responsible for This Girl Can campaign
VALERIE KELLER, Co-Founder and CEO of Imagine
LISE KINGO, Executive Director of the United Nations Global Compact.
JEREMY OPPENHEIM, Founding Partner SYSTEMIQ and Chair of Global Action Plan
JEFF SEABRIGHT, Chief Sustainability Officer of Unilever
JARVIS SMITH, Publisher of MyGreenPod and TV personality
GUNHILD A STORDALEN, Founder and Executive Chair of EAT
HALLA TOMASDOTTIR, CEO The B Team
If you’d like to find out more about the programme, sign up to our mailing list or find out if you’re eligible for our workshops, please get in touch: [email protected]