The Camden International Film Festival (CIFF) which celebrates its 10th anniversary this September 25-28, 2014, announced the expansion of the Points North Documentary Forum with the launch of the Points North Fellowship.
The Points North Fellowship enhances and expands upon the well-established Points North Pitch, a unique opportunity to pitch documentary works-in-progress to an international delegation of funders, commissioning editors and producers before a live audience. Five selected filmmakers (or filmmaking teams) will receive two VIP passes to the festival, four nights of accommodations and a stipend to subsidize their travel to Camden. The fellowship will begin with a day of intensive pitch training in partnership with the Maine Media Workshop (MMW) and focused industry mentorship held at the MMW’s Campus prior to the start of the festival, followed by the fifth annual Points North Pitch, held in the Camden Opera House on September 27, 2014.
In January 2015, all Points North Fellows will receive a ticket to the Cinema Eye Honors, an invitation to CIFF’s annual nominees party and two nights of accommodations in NYC. These events will give fellows an opportunity to connect with the wider documentary community and follow up on their pitches by setting up targeted meetings with industry delegates.
Submissions for the Points North Fellowship are now open through July 18, 2014. http://camdenfilmfest.org/
Fellows will also have a chance to win the Points North Pitch Award, which includes a $1000 cash prize from Documentary Educational Resources, three consultations with the Tribeca Film Institute, and a discounted post-production package from Modulus Studios. Past panelists include representatives from BBC, HBO, A&E IndieFilms, Participant Media, ARTE, ITVS, POV, Al Jazeera, Sundance Institute, Tribeca Film Institute, and Cinereach, as well as leading executive producers and distributors.
The Points North Documentary Forum, held concurrently with CIFF, will continue to feature three days of programming for passholders, including hands-on workshops, panel discussions, one-on-one meetings, networking events and master classes designed to help documentary filmmakers advance their projects in concrete, meaningful ways. In addition to Points North Fellows, the 2014 forum expects to host nearly forty filmmakers with projects in development, through partnerships with the UnionDocs Collaborative Fellows, the Bay Area Video Coalition’s MediaMaker Fellows and the LEF Foundation’s Moving Image grantees.
Points North Pitch Alumni currently traveling the festival circuit include Mike Attie and Meghan O’Hara’s In Country (Points North Pitch Winner 2012), which held its World Premiere at Full Frame in April, and Aaron Naar’s Mateo, which recently premiered at SXSW. Other notable films that have pitched at Points North include the critically-acclaimed Leviathan and the award-winning Betting the Farm.
As Camden International Film Festival enters its second decade and a new chapter of growth, the festival has recruited an 8-member Industry Advisory Board to guide the development of the forum, which includes Andrea Meditch (Founder/President, Back Allie Entertainment), Ryan Harrington (Vice President Artist Programs, Tribeca Film Institute), Kristin Feeley (Director, Labs and Artist Support, Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program), Brian Newman (Founder, Sub-Genre Media), Robb Moss (Filmmaker, Harvard University Professor), Mary Lampson (Filmmaker/Editor), Nancy Schafer (Producer, former ED of Tribeca Enterprises), and Lyda Kuth (Executive Director, LEF Foundation).
The Points North Documentary Forum is made possible by the generous support of the National Endowments for the Arts, the LEF Foundation, the Maine Arts Commission, The Fledgling Fund, Maine Technology Institute and the Maine Media Workshops.