Video Contests, Film Festivals, and Awards

(New Bedford, MA) - The first Buzzards Bay Film Festival is inviting submissions for its inaugural screenings on November 9-11 in Falmouth and New Bedford, Massachusetts.

The Festival is a salute to life lived in, on, and around Buzzards Bay, a 233-square mile estuary in Southeastern Massachusetts. The Festival is part of the year-long 25th Anniversary celebration of the Buzzards Bay Coalition, an environmental organization dedicated to the Bay�s preservation and protection.

The Festival welcomes works shot in whole or in part in the Buzzards Bay watershed or that have the Bay or the watershed somewhere in their content.

The films, however, are not required to have Buzzards Bay or the environment as their subject.

�Our goal is to build community among all of us who live in the region,� says Festival Director Tom Gidwitz. �Sharing great films and great stories from around the Bay will help link our towns closer together and inspire us to meet the challenges that confront the Bay.�

The Bay's main challenge is nitrogen pollution, Gidwitz says.

Nitrogen from septic systems and sewage plants stimulates algae growth. Excess algae can kill fish and other marine life. In Buzzards Bay, rusty algae blooms have colored bay waters for seven years in a row, and thick mats of green algae are now a common sight in Bay harbors and coves.

Solutions include improved municipal sewage plants and nitrogen-removing septic systems, �but they won�t happen unless more Bay citizens realize the need to turn the Bay's health around,� Gidwitz says. �The Buzzards Bay Film Festival is one step in that process.�

All genres and formats are eligible for the Festival, including features, shorts, dramas, documentaries, animation, and smart phone videos, as well as non-narrative films and new media, including digital art, computer graphics, and computer animation.

The Festival will award a $500 prize for the best 30-second Public Service Announcement about nitrogen pollution and the threat it poses to coastal waters. Additional prizes will be awarded for the best films by college, high school and middle school students.

Deadline for all entries is October 10, 2012.

Selected works will be screened on the evening of November 9 at the First Congregational Church, 68 Main Street, Falmouth. On the evening of November 10, the Festival will present films at Gallery X, 169 William Street, New Bedford.

On November 11, films will be presented at an all day event at the Zeiterion Theater in New Bedford.





Resources:

www.buzzardsbayfilmfestival.org