COVIDeo-19 is a pop-up documentary film festival intended to be about and for this moment. It is open only to undergraduate college students. By “pop-up” we mean that we will be opening and closing submissions quickly and that the COVIDeo-19 theme will be a one-time thing (we hope!).
We welcome documentaries ranging from one to 15 minutes (1:00 minimum, 15:00 maximum) that explore life, living, social issues, personal problems, and the like that have emerged in this time of pandemic. Films may be traditional in form, experimental, or anything in-between. However, they must have been produced, directed, written, filmed, and edited by the same student; in keeping with physical distancing and public health concerns, and with common practice in many undergraduate documentary film classes, working with a crew is strictly prohibited.
Films will be evaluated on a rolling basis, beginning immediately. The Earlybird deadline for submissions is June1, Regular deadline July 31, and submissions will close on August 20. Selections will be announced on September 1, and award winners–chosen by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Marshall Curry–will be revealed at the Grand Online Gala on Saturday, September 5, 2020, at 9 p.m. Eastern.
COVIDeo-19 is the 2020 installment of the newly-created These Times Student Film Festival. Each year the These Times festival directors will select a salient topic to/about which all films ultimately selected for the festival must speak. We will announce the 2021 These Times topic in the months ahead.
BACKGROUND
The COVIDeo-19 Film Festival was created by two college professors, one teaching in a film program and one in sociology, who independently assigned their students similar projects that boiled down to creating documentaries about life in these strange times. Inspired by those films, we wanted to create an outlet for similar work. And so COVIDeo-19 was born!
As our discussions about the festival developed, we realized we had stumbled on an idea for an annual festival. So These Times, the parent festival, was actually born after its child, COVIDeo-19. Strange days indeed.
The top three U.S. Domestic films and the top three International films will be selected for special placement on the festival website by Academy Award-winning filmmaker Marshall Curry.
The top two films– top film in the domestic category, and top film in the international category, will receive a Canon 70D package from Canon cameras!
Marshall Curry is an Academy Award-winning filmmaker who has written and directed both fiction and documentary films. His work has won top awards at Sundance, Tribeca, and played on television around the world. His writing has twice been nominated for Writers Guild of America awards.
He won the Oscar for THE NEIGHBORS' WINDOW, a short narrative film that he wrote and directed. He was previously nominated three times for Academy Awards for his documentary films, STREET FIGHT, IF A TREE FALLS: A STORY OF THE EARTH LIBERATION FRONT, and A NIGHT AT THE GARDEN. He also directed the award-winning documentaries RACING DREAMS and POINT AND SHOOT and was executive producer of MISTAKEN FOR STRANGERS.