We are thrilled to open the call for this year’s Bridging the Gap, inviting emerging filmmakers to propose their short documentaries responding to the theme TURBULENCE.
Now entering it’s 17th year, we are pleased that, with support from Creative Scotland and NI Screen, our acclaimed initiative will this year be open to early-career filmmakers across Scotland and Northern Ireland. The call for applications opens today and will close five weeks later on Sunday 22nd September with the commissioned films premiering at Edinburgh International Film Festival next June.
Bridging the Gap is, as ever, an opportunity to be bold, ambitious and provocative. We want to discover stories and characters that demand commissioners and audiences to take notice. Our theme this year is TURBULENCE! Turbulence is all around us but for most of us the word is largely associated with a bumpy flight, a holiday spoiler! We want you to surprise us with submissions that embrace the scope of the theme and subvert expectations in terms of form and content. There’s no right and wrong!
Some inspiration from SDI Director Noe Mendelle to get you started… In 2004, when the Hubble Space Telescope captured an image of illuminated star dust, scientists examined the celestial rendering only to find it oddly familiar. The swirls and billows of stellar turbulence bore an uncanny resemblance to The Starry Night, Van Gogh’s masterpiece forged within the walls of a French mental asylum over a century earlier.
How come Van Gogh in the depth of a psychotic breakdown, created an emotional image of the most impenetrable natural phenomenon — a complex theory previously only articulated mathematically by Andrey Kolmogorov?
We will never know but The Starry Night remains an example to encourage us, filmmakers, artists to look for those invisible moments that depict the complexity of what we, human beings go through. The turmoil is far more dramatic and interesting than the outcome.
According to law of physics we look the way we look because of turbulence. It shapes us and everything else around us…but what about our minds, our emotions?
All we ask is that your ideas are expansive and original rather than reductive and stereotypical. We look for strong narrative/stories led by characters able to awake our curiosity of the world, able to bring new understanding of whom we are as human beings. “Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” ~ Maya Angelou
Those little dots of emotional suspense, those political, social turbulences, how do they shape us? What stories do we have to tell about them? Once again, Bridging the Gap will take us on a cinematic journey to explore the unsaid but deeply felt.
APPLY NOW
Inspiration Workshops
While the call is live, workshops will take place in Glasgow, Belfast, Edinburgh and online. These workshops will explain the aims of the scheme and will provide tips on how to improve your chances of being selected. You will also get the opportunity to pitch your short documentary idea informally and receive feedback.
Friday 6th September:
ECA Main Lecture Theatre – Edinburgh College of Art
Inspiration Workshop – 2pm
This workshop is in collaboration with Edinburgh College of Art
Thursday 12th September:
HUB, the Mac, Belfast
Inspiration Workshop – 4.00pm
This workshop is in collaboration with Northern Ireland Screen
Friday 13th September:
Online – Zoom
Inspiration Workshop – 3pm
Up to five projects will be commissioned with the possibility of a cash budget of £8000 each (plus in-kind production and distribution support) and further hands-on training, right the way through the editing period. The films are geared for distribution in cinemas and festivals.
Full details on the initiative and how to apply can be found at Bridging the Gap. Good luck!
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