Details for the 2020-21 Redford Center Stories Filmmaker Challenge
(for the Planet911 Planet Stewardship Challenge in partnership with The Redford Center, click HERE)
* Note: If you are registered for RC Stories, you can access the RC film challenge (no other registration needed).
Redford Center Stories Filmmaker Challenge
Special Recognition for Ages 10-14
The Redford Center invites you to tell your story, to raise your voice, to help change the conversation about what environmentalism and environmental justice looks like so we can move more people into action. Enter the Redford Center Stories Filmmaker Challenge now, in partnership with Apple, with special prizes (see below)!
Deadline
Closes for Submissions – March 31
Theme and Prompts
Youth voices are shining everywhere we look. Young people across the globe are bringing an infusion of energy to the movement for environmental justice, and we invite you to be a part of it.
Our theme this year is environmental justice and regeneration.
With particular emphasis on environmental justice, equity of access to the outdoors, redefining what it is to be an “environmentalist,” and health and healing for communities and the planet, we invite student filmmakers to respond to one of the following prompts (click HERE for downloadable prompts sheet, English/Spanish) :
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- I l Live Here…. Take the opportunity to tell the story of your environment (the good and the bad). Fighting for environmental health doesn’t only take place in the forest. Show us your block, your neighborhood, your street, your city or town. Show us your wilderness.
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- I’m not who you think I am… I’m an environmentalist. This is your opportunity to stake your claim as an “environmentalist.” What are you fighting for? How are you investing in environmental justice, protection, and/or regeneration?
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- Open. Tell us your story. It can be a letter from your future self that tells us how you responded to the moment we are in. What did you do in 2021 to meet the moment? Or share your experience/interpretation of what environmental justice looks like or sounds like. Maybe share a story you’re moved to tell from your own community that reflects what you think is something worth sharing about what environmentalism and climate justice looks like.
Storytelling Strategies
Approaches to storytelling that Robert Redford and James Redford employ and that serve as foundational elements for The Redford Center’s original storytelling work, including (also see student checklist):
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- Solutions-focused stories to offer a more hopeful view of the future and to help audiences understand how they can play a role.
- Telling stories through characters so that audiences can see themselves in the story and also be educated on how the issue affects them.
- Prioritizing entertainment and working to make the film fun, funny, surprising, enlightening, beautiful, emotional, musical, hip and more.
- Clarifying the impact goal of the story before starting a project.
- Creating nonpartisan stories, meaning that the story doesn’t align with one political ideology but rather appeals to universal values.
- Taking an innovative storytelling approach, including trying out risky ideas and using creative camera angles and other visual storytelling tools and techniques.
- Showcasing unlikely characters and stories so that all audiences, even those that don’t readily identify as environmentalists, see themselves as part of the story and the solution.
Prizes and Celebrations
In addition to joining a collective impact by sharing their work with other students across the world, students will be eligible to receive prizes that engage their learning/ideas further. Next week we’ll detail the exciting prizes for selected films. We so look forward to seeing what your students create!
Youth Film Challenge Rules and Guidelines