It seems like we're currently living in the overturned tech-saturated dystopian world predicted by the cyberpunk literature of the 80s and 90s. Quite literally, we live in The Cyberpunk Now.
Are you interested in making a short film that illustrates this point? Perhaps a better question... Can you make a better cyberpunk short film than a bunch of real hackers?
The Cyberpunk Now Film Festival is a five-day media production hackathon, which is part of the Hackers on Planet Earth 2020 Conference.
Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) is one of the largest and longest-running hacker community events in the world, typically attracting thousands of attendees in New York City, gone virtual this summer courtesy of coronavirus.
At 12:00 PM EDT on July 25th, Cyberpunk Now festival organizers will publish a set of top-secret Required Challenge Elements at cyberpunkfestival.com, and participants will have five days to team up, brainstorm, write, produce, edit, finish, and upload their finished films to the submission portal by the deadline at 11:59 PM Pacific Daylight Time on July 30th.
Winners will be screened as they are announced in a HOPE 2020 conference video feed on August 2nd, with the Grand Prize winner being announced during the conference's Closing Ceremonies that same day.
The Challenge Categories are Animation, Comedy, Drama, Educational, Experimental, and Found Footage. Category winners will compete for the Grand Prize. There is a separate Most Cyberpunk prize.
Prize info is available here: https://cyberpunkfestival.com/prizes/