CFF: March Events & More
Join us March 19th at Five & Dime for our film club series' kickoff! Also inside: festival early-bird submission deadline, a new spotlight on climate cinema, and exciting opportunities
Hi all,
Happy March! We have a lot for you in this month’s newsletter: our first Climate Film Club, an incredible spotlight by CFF volunteer Akosua Owusu-Akyaw on the Africanfuturism short Pumzi, and some great opportunities for filmmakers.
Last Call for Early Birds! 🪱🐦
Our Early Bird Deadline to submit to CFF’s inaugural, multi-day September festival is this Friday, March 15th. Submit to CFF today on FilmFreeway!
NYC Climate Film Club Series 🎞️🍸
Tuesday, March 19th from 7-9pm
We’re kicking off our first Climate Film Club at Five & Dime in the Woolworth Building. The Climate Film Club is a new, semi-regular screening series. It’s a chance to get together, watch a climate short, and make new friends at casual spots throughout the city. We're thrilled to start this series with Everything Wrong and Nowhere to Go (2022), a thoughtfully comedic and candid film on climate anxiety, directed by Sindha Agha and produced by Elizabeth Woodward. RSVP Here!
🌅 The Spotlight
The Spotlight series takes a fresh look at works of climate cinema
By Akosua Owusu-Akyaw
Pumzi (2009), 22 min.
Dir. Wanuri Kahiu
Sitting at the intersection of cli-fi and Africanfuturism, Pumzi is an imaginative 2009 Kenyan short film directed by Wanuri Kahiu. The story is set in a futuristic country in Africa, where the once-flourishing natural ecosystem has gone extinct, leaving behind a desert landscape in which water is scarce and heavily rationed in the aftermath of World War III, dubbed the “Water Wars.” The audience watches as Asha, a curator for a museum that houses the only remains of the country’s now extinct flora and fauna, receives a mysterious box containing water-enriched soil–leading to the surprising sprouting of a fresh seedling, a confrontation with restrictive government forces, and a race to protect the first signs of external life in generations.
In a time in which we suffer from climate grief, when many of us feel nature speaking but can’t entirely say how or why, Pumzi hits close to home. In a reversal of roles, once Asha escapes to the outside world and plants the seedling, she uses her own sweat to provide water for the plant and her own body to shade it from the heat. She becomes the “mother of nature,” illustrating that there are fewer differences between humans, the environment, and our past and future than one might expect. In other words, we are all part of a sentient global ecosystem, in constant conversation with what we destroy and what we protect.
The director summarizes it best: “Pumzi is a visual ode to life. A life that… has within it that which is good, that which is beautiful and that which is love. Pumzi is the essence of all these. Pumzi is my breath.”
If you’re interested in watching an innovative short film that’s just as relevant now as it was in 2009, check out Pumzi at the link and follow director Wanuri Kahiu on her website or on Instagram.
🐝 Industry Buzz
How did last night’s Oscars contenders fare? From the point of view of the new “Climate Reality Check,” developed by Good Energy and the Buck Lab for Climate & Environment, Colby College, three films came out on top: Barbie, Mission: Impossible–Dead Reckoning Part One, and Nyad included characters and storylines that referenced climate change. Recently launched as a climate corollary to the Bechdel-Wallace Test, which measures gender representation in film, the Climate Reality Check is a simple tool that gives writers, industry professionals, audiences, and researchers the ability to measure when and how climate change is referenced on screen.
Why use the test? Representation matters, and so does encouraging conversation at the nexus of climate storytelling, coalition building, and community engagement. While the test doesn’t suggest or require that every story highlight climate change, it does ask us to reflect on how these critical issues are portrayed in our current media landscape–helping us navigate, as Good Energy writes, “what it means to be human in the age of climate change.”
What else we’re reading:
Climate Creators to Watch (Pique Action)
How Hollywood Is Crafting A New Climate Change Narrative (Rolling Stone)
Film studio from Oscar-winning director aims to stir up ‘populist anger’ over climate crisis (The Guardian)
Opportunities & Events
☀️ Sunny Side of the Doc (Due Mar. 14)
Looking for partners and financing for your next documentary? Submit your project to Sunny Side of the Doc’s pitch sessions! With 300+ top-level international decision-makers in attendance, representing leading broadcasters, streamers, foundations, sales agents and other funders looking for impactful stories, pitching at sunny side is a unique opportunity to reach your future partners. Pitch sessions include: science, nature and conservation, global issues, history, arts and culture, new voices, and impact campaigns.
🐅 New York WILD Film Festival (Apr. 3 - 7)
New York WILD™ is the first annual documentary film festival in New York to showcase a spectrum of topics, from exploration and adventure to wildlife, conservation and the environment, bringing all things WILD to one of the most urban cities in the world.
📽️ Bloomberg Green Docs Open Call (Due Apr. 26)
The Bloomberg Green Docs competition is open to all eligible filmmakers who would like to compete to win a $25,000 grand prize for a short climate documentary. We want to explore our climate future with documentaries that reveal the world we are making today. Ecosystems are being restored and tomorrow’s zero-carbon communities are being formed. At the same time, extremes in our habitats warn of cascading climate consequences.
🌊 Art at the Edge Climate Exhibition RFP (Due Apr. 26)
The Waterfront Alliance seeks original proposals from individual artists, collaborative artist teams, arts and culture-related businesses, graduate-level art and design students, and other for-profit or nonprofit organizations or entities that will provide a public art project (sculpture, installation, performance, or other artistic medium) that will activate spaces through a climate, water, or environmental justice lens. The project will feature three to five artists and award each up to $7,500.
🎨 Arts & Climate Incubator (Rolling)
The Arts & Climate Incubator is a 5-day intensive for artists, activists, scientists, students, and educators who want to engage or further their engagement with climate change through artistic practices. Part think tank, part workshop, the Incubator brings together 15 to 20 participants of all ages and backgrounds to investigate the potential of the arts in creating a more just and regenerative future. Participants interact with guest speakers from fields such as climate science, psychology, activism, and urban design, who provide expertise on local issues.
🪨❄️ Coal + Ice @ Asia Society (Rolling)
COAL + ICE is an immersive photography and video exhibition and series of related events that visualizes the causes and consequences of the climate crisis and proposes creative solutions. From February 13 through August 11, 2024, climate change takes center stage at Asia Society New York through a series of speaker events, performances, films, and more.