The Good Pitch has now completed its third year of international events. Its last event of 2011 was Good Pitch Europe where it facilitated effective, world-changing partnerships between documentary film and the brand, NGO, philanthropy and media sectors.
DONE AND DUSTED
Good Pitch Europe 2011 took place on Tuesday September 25th at the Royal Institute of Great Britain. It welcomed over 400 people from all walks of life - filmmakers, policymakers, campaigners, funders, broadcasters - to listen and collaborate on eight pitching documentary films with associated outreach goals.
If you’d like to see some images from the day, courtesy of our friend Steve Howse, then take a look at this gallery on our Flickr account.
PROJECT LINEUP
Covering issues from food security in Africa to inner city gang violence, from the catastrophic depletion of the oceans to sex and disability, the lineup featured award-winning directors from the UK, the Netherlands, Cameroon, Italy, Denmark and USA: Ilse & Femke van Velzen (Justice For Sale), Alison Klayman (Ai Wei Wei Never Sorry), Carlo Zoratti (The Special Need), BAFTA-Winner Will Anderson (Fish Fight Europe), Osvalde Lewat & Hugo Berkeley (The Next Harvest), Camilla Nielsson (Democrats), David Bond & Ashley Jones (The Nature Project) and 2010 Grierson-Winner Penny Woolcock (What’s Going On).
THE FILMS
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry
Dir. Alison Klayman
Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry is an intimate portrait of an international art star during two tumultuous years of his life. A “dissident artist” in the headlines, an online god to liberal Chinese netizens, Ai Weiwei blurs the boundaries of art and politics. But can an artist change China?
Democrats
Dir. Camilla Nielsson
Democrats is a film about the creation of a new constitution in Zimbabwe. The film follows two top politicians, who have been appointed to lead the country through the reform process. The two men are political opponents, but united in the ambition to make history by giving the nation a new founding document, that can give birth to the future’s Zimbabwe.
Fish Fight Europe
Dir. Will Anderson
In January 2011, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall fronted a highly successful TV and online campaign which exposed the madness of ‘discards’ – a policy which sees hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fish wasted every year. In 6 months, 678,000 people have signed up to the petition asking the EU Parliament to stop discards. To roll out the campaign into Europe and help change European fishing policy for the better, the team needs to make TV programmes in Germany, France, Spain and Poland. It’s a critical job - but can they do it?
Justice For Sale
Dirs. Ilse & Femke van Velzen
Justice for Sale follows Claudine Tsongo, a young Congolese human rights lawyer who refuses to accept that justice is for sale in her country. She takes the clients no one else wants: those living in poverty, wrongfully accused of crimes they didn’t commit, who have been indiscriminately sentenced to lengthy, unjustified prison terms. Claudine is determined to fight for justice and to end impunity in her country at great personal risk and against the odds. A story of courage, strength and hope for a better Congo.
The Next Harvest
Dirs. Hugo Berkeley & Osvalde Lewat
Africa produces 10% less food than it did in 1960. During that same period, the population has tripled. Following the story of an industrial sugar plantation rising on the banks of the Niger River in Mali, this film asks how Africa can feed itself in coming decades. The Next Harvest is one of eight Why Poverty? films.
The Nature Project (Working Title)
David Bond & Ashley Jones
Filmmaker David Bond grew up in the countryside but now lives in the city. He is stuck in the digital world. During a rare countryside trip he noticed a huge change in his family. They stopped worrying – about emails, about clothes and about TV – and looked happy. Are they deprived of nature? Do they have Nature Deficit Disorder? Leaving his anxious life behind, David goes searching for people living in harmony with their environment. His encounters shed light on our relationship with our environment, and he discovers what we can do to get back to the bosom of Mother Nature.
The Special Need
Dir. Carlo Zoratti
A film about disabled people’s need for sex and love. Enea is an attractive 28 year-old; 5’8” tall, with brown hair and blue eyes. But he is autistic, has only had one girlfriend and is still a virgin. He really wants to change this, but Italy doesn’t offer any legal solution. So, Enea and his friend Alex embark on a boy’s road trip across Europe. What started as an expedition looking for sex soon becomes a journey into Enea’s most intimate feelings and a way for Alex to reflect upon his own love story.
What’s Going On?
Dir. Penny Woolcock
The Burgers and the Johnsons are rival gangs who have been killing each other in a postcode war in Birmingham for fifteen years. We have filmed a fragile truce process from its very beginning in September 2010. But in order for it to prosper, wounds from the past need to be healed. In 2002 twenty-seven people were killed, culminating in the notorious murders of Charlene Ellis and Leticia Shakespeare on New Years Day 2003. Solicitor Errol Robinson called the subsequent trial a ‘major miscarriage of justice’. What’s Going On’ will document the truce and unravel the systemic causes of this small war.
WHAT IS THE GOOD PITCH?
Since the first Good Pitch in Oxford in 2008, over 90 films have pitched and 1500 organisations have attended an event in London, Oxford, New York, Washington DC, Toronto, Johannesburg or San Francisco. In this time over $3m has been leveraged in funding for documentary projects and their outreach campaigns.
WHAT ARE WE LOOKING FOR?
We look for documentary film projects which tackle important global and national issues and enhance our understanding of the world. We also want to see that filmmakers have thought about what they hope to achieve with their film through an associated outreach campaign. The campaign can take any form, whether seeking to promote public engagement and/or policy change, or engaging with the issues raised in new and interesting ways.
We look for projects at any stage from early production to completion, provided projects have not received a major festival screening; rough cut stage is ideal. The call is open to projects looking for completion funding, outreach funding, campaigning networks or a combination of these.
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Lesen Sie hier Informationen in Deutscher Sprache
Click here to view a map of eligible countries.
