Dear Sir or Madam,
I hope this email finds you well.
I am writing to you to find out whether you / your organization would be interested in participation in our FUTURE DOCS platform for creative encounters of documentary filmmakers and human rights defenders.
FUTURE DOCS intends to bring about new powerful documentaries with potential for tangible social impact.
FUTURE DOCS is based on the idea of a reversed pitching. It means that human rights defenders and activists present selected cases they have been working on to participating filmmakers. Various human rights topics and initiatives, especially those underrepresented on screen, illustrated by powerful human stories behind them, are pitched to creative documentary filmmakers.
The main events of the 2017-2018 FUTURE DOCS program include: a preparatory workshop for human rights defenders at the International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival “Inconvenient Films” (Vilnius, Lithuania), to be held on October 14-15, and a joint workshop for filmmakers and human rights defenders at the WATCH DOCS. Human Rights in Film International Film Festival (Warsaw, Poland), to be held on December 8-10.
Participation in the project is free of charge. Travel, accommodation and board is provided by the organizers.
The most promising documentary project, resulting from a cooperation between a filmmaker and a human rights defender, will receive the FUTURE DOCS Award of 5000 USD for further development.
You may find more on the FUTURE DOCS here: www.watchdocs.pl/futuredocs
Through participation in FUTURE DOCS human rights defenders bring to light problems they have been working on and, as a result, have a chance to obtain informed advocacy tools for their further endeavors: world class cinematic documentary films.
Careful selection of most interesting topics and powerful stories, as well as participation of committed human right defenders are crucial for the success of our project.
That is why I am turning to you with a question, whether in scope of your / your organization’s activity you see any potential subject matters concerning broadly understood human rights, as well as strong cases you know from your work that might illustrate those matters, which could be presented to the filmmakers. Or maybe you could share this invitation with those who would be interested in it.
These not necessarily have to be problems with human rights observance – also interesting initiatives of civil society and individual activists are in our focus. We are interested not only in civil and political rights, but also in economic and cultural ones, as well as in equality and the ban of discrimination, democracy and the rule of law, along with threats and challenges human rights face, such as populism, nationalism, shrinking civil society space or propaganda.
We are actively looking for potential: topics, activists – be it NGOs’ representatives or individuals, investigative journalists and human rights lawyers included – as well as personal stories that can illustrate given topics. These stories that are going to be presented are not the exact ones we would encourage the documentary makers to film – they should serve as examples of what a filmmaker may find if he or she delves into the subject, especially in collaboration with the activist who can provide access to people, stories and expertise.
Therefore, it would be much appreciated if you / your organization would like to participate but also, if you are not going to do that, but you would be so kind and to give any hints as to important but underrepresented in public discourses human rights related issues or other activists or NGOs who might be interested in participating.
If you / your organization would be interested in participating, a very short description of the issue / subject matter – up to 1500 characters – would be great for the beginning, and of course we would be happy to send you feedback as soon as possible. Otherwise I would be grateful for your comments or hints in any form. You can also contact directly project coordinators from our partner WATCH DOCS festival in Warsaw – Marta Szuchnicka and Maciej Nowicki, sending an email to: futuredocs@watchdocs.pl They will be happy to answer all the questions concerning FUTURE DOCS you may have.
We hope to hear from you,
Birute Sabatauskaite, Marta Szuchnicka and Maciej Nowicki
Lithuanian Centre for Human Rights
(LCHR)
Inconvenient Films
Smetonos g. 5, 311 kab., Vilnius, LT-01115
Mob.: +370 687 22991
Web.: www.nepatoguskinas.lt; www.manoteises.lt; www.lchr.lt,
E-mail: birute@lchr.lt