YouTube, in partnership with the Venice Film Festival and Scott Free Productions, today announced the launch of Your Film Festival in the MENA region, a global competition to find the world’s best storytellers, connect them with a global audience, and provide one deserving entrant with a career-changing opportunity.
Content creators around the world are invited to submit a 15-minute, story-driven video of any format, style and genre, to Youtube.com/yourfilmfestival. After submissions are whittled down to 50 semi-finalists, audiences from around the world will cast their votes, choosing 10 finalists. The finalists will travel to Italy, where their work will open the 2012 Venice Film Festival, and a grand prize winner will be crowned and rewarded with a $500,000 YouTube Original production grant to work with Scott Free Films to create a brand new work for the world to see.
“YouTube connects the world through video; it has created a new ecosystem for content creators bringing the work of artists, musicians, filmmakers, human rights activists, world leaders, and ordinary people to a global audience,” said Mohamad Mourad, Google Gulf Regional Manager. “We’re excited today to bring the global competition Your Film Festival to the region and offer aspiring MENA filmmakers the chance to create some magic and momentum and maybe get their work shown at one of the most important events for film in the world.”
“We’re thrilled to work with YouTube again,” says director Ridley Scott, co-founder of Scott Free Productions. “The Life In A Day collaboration was wonderful, and we’re excited for the opportunity to use YouTube as a platform to find great storytellers from across the globe. After producing Life in a Day for YouTube, we view the platform as a breeding ground for some of the most exciting new voices in film and story. Ideally, we’d find the Orson Welles of this next generation of creatives, so I’m excited to see all of the submissions and am hopeful we’ll discover some new talent for RSA as well.”
The new initiative serves to bridge the gap between the old and the new; YouTube, as the world’s newest and most democratic forum for entertainment will team with the oldest film festival in the world to help discover and nurture new talent. Directors, producers and writers from around the world will be encouraged to submit their films, and the voting will ultimately belong to the YouTube community at large. Submissions, which open today and close on March 31, 2012, will be reviewed by Scott Free Productions and narrowed down to 50 semi-finalists from around the world during the summer of 2012. The YouTube community will then vote for ten finalists, who will be flown in to unveil their films in a special program at the world renowned Venice Film Festival. In Venice, a jury will vote among the ten films to select one Grand Prize Winner. The winner will receive a development deal with Ridley Scott’s Scott Free Productions.
With 60 hours of video uploaded every minute, an equivalent of one hour per second, and a total of four billion video views a day, YouTube has set itself as one of the largest online platforms in the world. “YouTube has long been a platform for entertaining, original content, and now Your Film Festival will give that content and the creators behind it the spotlight they deserve,” says Robert Kyncl, Vice President, Global Head of Content at YouTube. “Working once again with Ridley Scott’s team at Scott Free and the acclaimed Venice Film Festival, YouTube will create an opportunity for filmmakers to share their work with the world and potentially be rewarded in a career changing way.”
Your Film Festival is one of several efforts by YouTube to push the boundaries of music, art, and film. It follows the incredibly successful partnership that YouTube experienced with Scott Free Productions to help create the critically acclaimed documentary Life In A Day. Other projects like the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, YouTube Play, and YouTube Space Lab are examples of the convergence of online video with traditional arts. Emirates, the global airline, have also come on board as a proud sponsor of the program and the festival.
YouTube and Emirates announce global competition to find the world's best storytellers: Your Film Festival 2012
