New Zealand’s only Academy Awards® accredited film festival, Show Me Shorts, has launched a campaign to crowd-fund a People’s Choice prize. This new award category will give audiences the chance to vote for their favourite short film during the festival in November.
The ‘Show Short-Film Makers the Love’ fundraising campaign aims to raise $10,000. Half of this will become a cash prize for the winner of the People’s Choice award, and the remainder will be used by the charitable trust that runs the festival and awards for its operating expenses.
Festival Director Gina Dellabarca says, “The team and I had a lot of fun figuring out what kind of rewards our audience would like in exchange for their pledges. I hope people will get involved, and choose some of the great gifts we have on offer in exchange for contributing.”
Rewards for pledging to the campaign include movie tickets, DVDs, coffee with last year’s Best Film award winner Zia Mandviwalla, the chance to attend the Rialto Channel Wellington Opening Night event, and an exclusive private short-film screening.
BE AWESOME, MAKE A PLEDGE AND GET COOL STUFF!
Show Me Shorts received over double the usual number of entries this year, thanks largely to its new qualifying status for the Oscars®. That means a bumper crop of shorts to choose from for the festival programme, so competition will be fierce.
Other prizes up for grabs to filmmakers who win awards this year include $1,500 cash for the NZFC Special Jury Prize and $1,500 cash for the new RPM Pictures Best Colourist award. The winner of the prestigious Best Film award will qualify for entry to the Academy Awards® as well as winning a package of film-shoot gear rental from Rubber Monkey and professional VFX work from Cause FX. The full list of awards and prizes will be announced shortly.
