NFFTY (National Film Festival for Talented Youth) is excited to officially unveil the 1st National Youth Filmmaker Summit! The organization is honored that the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA) approved a $15,000 Grants for Arts Projects award to support this programming.
Thanks to the NEA’s support, this event will be a new tentpole for NFFTY moving forward, expanding the alumni-centered programming they have evolved the past couple years. NFFTY alumni will come back to the youth filmmaker community to share career advice and tips with the next generation coming up, in a variety of panels, roundtables, and workshops. Starting in 2022 it will be a hybrid event, with NFFTY touring to a different city each fall (stay tuned!). This year the Summit will be entirely virtual and free to all.
The 2021 Summit takes place over five weeks from Mon Oct 4th – Sat Nov 6th, and ends with Film Career Day 2021, produced in partnership with the City of Seattle. The Summit aligns with NFFTY’s mission of supporting young filmmakers 25 and under, but is open to all ages and will take place on the same platforms that NFFTY launched for their 2020 festival — Airmeet, Eventive, and Zoom.
The programming is divided into three tracks — Create, Advance, and Launch — with an average of five sessions each. Attendees can choose each session à la carte — so they can mix-and-match their way through, attend all sessions in a track, or do the whole thing.
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- Create is all about answering the big questions about why you want to be a filmmaker and what kind of stories you want to tell.
- Advance is full of tips and tools to consider about how to up your game as a filmmaker.
- Launch is about how to put yourself out there as a professional filmmaker and make career moves, and includes virtual table fairs with schools and other organizations to get the training and resources you need.
The full Summit program will be unveiled Sept 22nd when registration opens.
Breaking details about guest speakers and other surprises will be announced on NFFTY’s Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.
