COVID-19 has severely affected student film production, both practically and artistically. To help young filmmakers stay creative and support them in these exceptional conditions, the Cambridge-based Watersprite Film Festival has launched a new award this year — The Creativity in Crisis Short Film Award. 

The award aims to show how young filmmakers explore their creativity during the coronavirus pandemic. The festival wants to encourage them to keep telling their stories despite the restrictive and challenging conditions the pandemic has put us all in. The most inventive and resourceful ways of depicting this peculiar experience will be awarded. The organisers want to see stories from all over the world to shed light on different ways the pandemic has affected different parts of the globe. 

Conditions your film needs to meet:

• The film must have been shot and edited after the 11th March 2020, the date when the World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a pandemic. 
• The film does not need to be explicitly about COVID-19, but the film must be inspired in some way by the events of the global pandemic, its aftermath or your experience of containment measurement. 
• The short film can be an independent or collaborative effort, although film production should follow the advice of public health authorities and should adhere to containment measures (if any) in your country.
• The film can take any form: fiction, animation and documentary, music video or experimental film.
• The submission deadline is: 12th August 2020.

How to submit your film:

• You must enter your film for the Creativity in Crisis award on the submission page. Your film may also be considered for Watersprite’s Genre and Technical Award categories, provided that the film meets those categories’ eligibility criteria. In this case, you must submit your film to both the Creativity in Crisis Award category and a Genre category.
• The entrant must upload a production diary to the “Files & Attachments” section of their submission’s FilmFreeway page, marking the dates of filming in bullet points and any reflections or highlights of particular days’ (or hours) during the filming and editing process. If you have not already written a production diary, you may use the Watersprite Production Diary Template available on its website.

Next year’s Watersprite Film Festival will be held in Cambridge from 5th to 7th March 2021. 

For more information visit: https://www.watersprite.org.uk/