Open Call for Submissions
Submission Deadline: Saturday, February 1, 2020
Milano Design Film Festival World Tour Greece — Athens 2020, for its first edition from Friday, March 20 to Sunday, March 22, will present a handpicked selection of creative, innovative, inspiring features and short films showcasing the universality and versatility of design thinking. From fiction films to documentaries and animation films, from the great classics to recent productions and the latest avant-garde movements, we direct our attention to the power of the cinematic techniques that run the gamut of cinema histories and film genres, while addressing major social issues.
As an original experimental platform that communicates Design and seeks alternative ways to spark social engagement and community building, MDFF Greece—Athens collects stories about practitioners, styles, and avant-gardes, from both the past and present that constantly inspire the contemporary society. Mapping its program through key thematic categories – Design, Architecture, Sustainability, Urban Life, Biography, Artificial Intelligence, Art, and the Art of Thinking — the Event aims at introducing to the Greek public a new, different way to read, perceive, elaborate and relate to our present, and all that surrounds us.
MDFF Athens 2020 brings Design on Screen and invites the Greek creativity to interact through film titles and topics. This is an Open Call to Greek and international designers, architects, film directors, producers, professors, students, photographers, brands, critics, civic visionaries, institutions, and major companies to discover new communication modalities and entrepreneurial strategies.
The Festival can be seen as an alternative distribution structure, as a container, a reference point for independent directors, but also Greek and international independent production houses.
For the reasons above, the Festival would like to warmly invite filmmakers and all sorts of design thinkers to respond and provide their own interpretation to this year’s title “Lights On: Projecting Our Contemporary Future”. Inspired by the title of MDFF 2019 “Mind the Gap”, this first edition’s title conceptualizes Light as a physical and mental space, symbolic of the time of transition we are experiencing today. At the crossroads of different pasts, presents, and futures, Light emerges as a language amongst the languages of the digital era, enhancing our understanding of our contemporaneity, demonstrating our origins and cultural heritage, and bringing together an archive of facts and personalities, trials and hopes, technological and creative revolutions, changes of style and lifestyle.
At the same time, MDFF Athens invites filmmakers and design thinkers to give their own definition of what makes a film a “Design film” — a term coined to include stories and moving images that try to invent new ways of seeing and new methods of perceiving cities and cultures, buildings and objects, facets of the urban fabric and the human interaction with natural landscapes. Design films narrate the lives of distinctive individuals, but also imagine different models of collective living. Design in film can be located in the way a movie was conceived, shot, and edited, representing design as applied to cinematography, yet design films also open up an inquiry for broader issues, such as consumerism, globalization, or the climate change. A Design film can renegotiate the past, transform the present and project the future — and this is why they continuously call for new interpretations.
Films can be submitted through the Festival’s official web page. Please send the following materials to:
[email protected]
-A completed submission form
-A private link to the movie. Please note that, upon selection, the film file should be provided in ProRes or DCP format.
-A synchronized English subtitles file (.srt or .xml) and the dialogue list in the original language.
-At least 3 high-quality stills of the movie and a photo of the director (min. 300 dpi)
-A full information sheet
-A technical sheet
-The director’s biography (approx. 200 words) and filmography (where applicable)
-Film Poster (min. 300 dpi)
-Trailer of the film (.mov or .mp4)
The selected films will be screened at the Greek Film Archive from Friday, March 20 to Sunday, March 22, 2020, in tandem with talks, discussions, and workshops with special guests and all participants. Selected film titles will travel back to MDFF’s mother country of Italy, for the key Milanese event in October 2020.
We are looking forward to receiving your suggestions and to welcoming new members of the thriving community of thinkers and practitioners in a rich, stimulating environment — within and beyond the cinema screen!