The Redford Center and Mountainfilm co-presented a pitch event at the 2024 Mountainfilm Festival in partnership with IF/Then Shorts. Awardees received up to $30k, impact and professional development, as well as travel, accommodation, and passes to attend Mountainfilm Festival.
As social culture moves increasingly online, society and technology have placed humankind on a path to becoming an indoor species. Today, most of us spend over 90% of our time indoors. This growing disconnection from nature negatively affects us in significant ways — from health problems exacerbated by nature deprivation to systemic inequities reinforced when communities lack access to the outdoors.
Storytellers have a unique and important role to play in driving the culture change needed to increase our care and respect for the natural world and break down the systemic and individual barriers to outdoor access.
To support the production and impact of outstanding short films on the theme of nature connection, The Redford Center and Mountainfilm co-presented a pitch event at the 2024 Mountainfilm Festival in partnership with IF/Then Shorts in Telluride, Colorado. Awarded films received up to $30,000 in funding, impact and professional development training, as well as travel, accommodation, and passes to attend Mountainfilm Festival.
An evolution and expansion on the Nature Connection and Nature Access Pitch that The Redford Center and IF/Then have partnered on since 2021, this call for entries sought impactful stories of leaders, activists, and communities paving the way for creative and equitable solutions that reconnect individuals and communities with nature and the outdoors.
PROGRAM DETAILS:
This opportunity called for original stand-alone short documentaries in production of no more than 30 minutes that explore environmental stories centered around restoring humanity’s connection with nature and the outdoors.
Five finalists were selected to attend in-person training and compete at the pitch event at Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride, CO on May 25, 2024.
Finalists received a workshop on impact driven filmmaking from The Redford Center, a tailored pitch training session hosted by IF/Then Shorts, and presented their projects to a panel of environmental and filmmaking industry experts.
Three of the finalists received a non-recoupable grant of $7,000 to support the development and production of their project, while the winning project received a non-recoupable grant of $30,000 and an additional project was awarded special jury recognition and a grant of $20,000.
PROJECT ELIGIBILITY:
Submissions were in the form of character-driven, place-based, community-inspired, short-form storytelling centered around restoring and strengthening humanity’s relationship with nature, and the leaders, communities and cultures leading this charge.
This opportunity was open to individuals living and working in the US, prioritizing stories and filmmakers representing the communities often most impacted by environmental problems and the challenges of outdoor access, which includes Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC), LGBTQIA+ people, immigrants, undocumented people, people with disabilities, and/or women.
In addition to being on theme, eligible projects must meet the following criteria:
Be an original, short documentary with a final duration of 10-30 minutes
Be factually accurate, follow best practices in documentary ethics, and be designed for a U.S. audience by a filmmaker living and working in the U.S.
Be accountable to and authentically represent people and places featured in the film
Be driven by (a) compelling character(s), with access to the character(s) secured
Be presented in English or subtitled in English
Be in production or post-production and have no prior distribution attached
Suggested stories related to this theme may include, but are not limited to:
The physical, mental, spiritual, and social impacts of humanity’s growing disconnection from the natural world.
The vast benefits that time outdoors can contribute to individual, community, and environmental health.
Leaders, activists, and communities paving the way for creative solutions that reconnect individuals and communities with nature and the outdoors.
An equitable, inclusive, and diverse environmental movement that brings underrepresented and historically excluded communities and voices to the forefront.
Breaking down barriers of access to nature for historically excluded and marginalized communities, highlighting the complex social, racial, economic, and health inequities related to issues of nature access.
Cultural practices that honor traditional and ancestral knowledge which reframe our relationship to nature.
Current decolonization practices around land rights and histories that center Indigenous perspectives.
Raising awareness around and addressing systemic bias, discrimination, and injustice in environmental policy.
Symphony of Silence tells the story of Josue, a member of the Cofan tribe in the Amazon rainforest, who has come to Washington State to learn how to capture the sounds of the natural world from pioneering acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton. Gordon is losing his hearing and wants to pass what he has learned to the next generation while he still can. The pair come from vastly different worlds, but share the simple belief that recording the natural sounds of the planet has the potential to help save it. As Gordon recognizes the limits of his own ability to continue his work, we see Josue stepping into the role as someone who understands the stakes better than anyone, as he watches his community fight to conserve their homeland and as he discovers his place in that fight.
When her family land is taken for a bombing range by the US military, an Indigenous Chamorro daughter takes it upon herself to learn Western science from an elder with youth by her side. Will scientific data provide the answers for the community to hold the US federal agencies accountable?
After being threatened at knifepoint, a teenage Chevaughn finds himself in the company of sea-kayakers, and discovers a way to make New York City feel a bit more like his childhood home in Jamaica. Now, he’s on a mission to reshape the future of the city by reconnecting it to the water and is bringing a group of local kids on a source-to-sea kayaking mission from the headwaters of the Hudson to the Statue of Liberty.
As sea levels inch upwards, researchers predict that the salt marsh sparrow will go extinct by 2050. In coastal Rhode Island, a team of citizen scientists spends every day during the breeding season in the marsh – finding nests, monitoring nestlings, and experimenting with ways to stave off the sparrow’s nests from the encroaching tides.
Devin Reuben is training to be the first certified nimiipuu whitewater guide of his generation. The nimiipuu (Nez Perce) have a long history with river travel– in fact, they introduced the practice to settlers– but centuries of displacement and disconnection means Tribal members are now largely absent from their ancestral rivers. Devin says, “it's one big step for us: not just me, all of us. We're slowly bringing our culture back.”
Partners:
Partners:
KEY DATES:
January 12, 2024 – Application Opens
Mid-March 2024 – All applicants notified of status, finalists announced
May 23-26, 2024 – Mountainfilm Festival in Telluride, CO
May 24, 2024 – In-person workshop at Mountainfilm
May 25, 2024 – Nature Connection Pitch
Application closed on February 5, 2024 (11:59 PM PT).
Please direct any questions regarding this program to agovind@redfordcenter.org.
An open call for filmmakers to share their short documentary works-in-progress focusing on connecting or reconnecting with nature for a pitch at Mountainfilm in May 2024. The opportunity celebrates storytellers and stories that explore environmental stories centered around restoring humanity’s connection with nature and the outdoors.
