VietDocs 2011

Climate Change – Changing my Life

Young filmmakers in Vietnam are in need of opportunities to present factual work about social and environmental issues they feel concerned about. The ideas and aspirations exist, but are often left unrealized, due to a lack of platforms for presenting such work and their non-commercial nature. The initiative VietDocs – Vietnam Green Documentary Film Award aims to encourage and support the upcoming generation of filmmakers to produce documentaries that reflect such issues.

In 2010 the project addresses environmental awareness in Vietnam. Environmental problems as air, water and soil pollution are affecting everyone from the rice farmer to people living in the city. Impacts of climate change like heavy rainfalls, rising temperatures, heat waves, frequent inundations and typhoons, rising sea level and related problems in food supply are changing our everyday life. Global causes are responsible for these phenomena that are affecting us on a local level.

So what about your behavior concerning transport, waste disposal and energy use? Does climate change affect your and your family’s everyday life? Is environmental protection an important topic in Vietnam? What can we do to tackle climate change and what is already done? It is up to you to express your ideas in a short documentary film and show us your point of view about “climate change – changing my life”.

The competition VietDocs Climate Change – Changing my Life involves the nationwide participation of young filmmakers and students aged 18 – 30 to submit a max. two A4 page proposal of a short film on the subject of climate change and its consequences and local effects. The proposals are submitted on the competition website and are made available to members of a jury committee. The jury convenes to discuss their choices and make a selection of max. 20 proposals for the second round.

The remaining applicants are then asked to develop their proposal texts into a script. They participate in a three-day workshop with a team of directors/writers from Germany to train in various aspects of short documentary filmmaking and to develop their script and plan the production (travel costs and accommodation covered for the workshop participants). The films are subsequently shot, cut and finished between February and April 2011. The films must not be longer than 15 minutes. After the delivery of the finished piece, each short film will be compensated with 250 USD towards the accrued production expenditure.

Throughout the whole project special attention is given to knowledge acquiring and training about the different aspects of documentary film making. During the production phase the applicants can attend a production workshop at DocLab Hanoi, offering them advice and tools for their work.

The 20 films will be screened at the Goethe-Institut Hanoi and submitted to the jury committee in May 2011. The jury will select max. 10 finalist films that will be screened at the “European Documentary Film Festival” in Hanoi in June 2011 and decide about the 3 best films. The award ceremony will take place during the “European Documentary Film Festival”. The viewing public will be invited to enter a vote about which film they found the most well-crafted and interesting.

The distribution of the prizes is as follows: The third place receives 500 USD, the second place 700 USD and the first place receives 1.000 USD. The first prize winner additionally receives a budget of maximum 3.500 USD to produce a feature length documentary (25 min. – 30 min.) on the subject covered to be included in the South East Asia Science Film Festival SeaDocs 2012.

Partners

• DED
• InWEnt
• National Institute of Documentary and Science Film
• VTV