Winners Announced!

The winners for both the 24/7 Filmmakers Challenge and Online Jury Prize have been announced! Head over to our main page to see the winners.

The Winners are….

Online Jury Prize Winner – HUDDLE

24/7 Filmmaking Challenge Winner – ‘PAUSE’ by Mole Hill for Natural England

It’s late….more in depth details and info about what happens next will be posted in the next couple of days. Any questions, please email ed@reductionfestival.org….

Well done to all of you!

Good night!

Ed

Online Voting Now CLOSED

ONLINE VOTING HAS NOW CLOSED

Voting for the Online Jury Prize is now CLOSED and the votes counted and finalised. The voting forms are now being removed from the pages, but in the meantime please do not vote any further as your votes WILL NOT BE COUNTED.

Final tallys were taken at 23:59 GMT on Friday 17th October.The results will be announced shortly, please watch this space.

The winning film from the ‘Other’ and ‘Documentary’ strands will join the top 2 films from the ‘Fiction’ strand in the final, with a vote from our esteemed panel to decide the overall winner, who will be the recipient of the £1000 top prize and the title of ‘Audience Award for Best Environmental Short Film’.

A huge thank you to all the filmmakers who submitted work to the festival, whether it made it into the final 17 or not. Without your filmmaking talent and dedicated to environmental subjects this section of the festival could not have been the success it was.

We’re all ready to begin the Reduction Weekend with feature screenings, plus showings of the films from the 24/7 Filmmaking Challenge and the closing gala with awards and all manner of excitement.

For more information on the closing gala and feature screenings please click here or on the flyers below.

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A big (BIG) Thank you….

We wanted to take this opportunity to thank our sponsors in this curious adventure. They are all businesses and organisations that genuinely care about this stuff so I can heartily recommend you click on their links below to find out more…..

ARUP (www.arup.com) sponsored 3 films:
Arup is a global firm of designers, engineers, planners and business consultants. Operating in 37 countries, Arup is the creative force behind many of the world’s most innovative and sustainable building initiatives. Key projects include the world’s first eco-city in Dongtan, near Shanghai in China, and BedZED, an innovative development demonstrating zero-carbon residential life in the UK. Sheffield was one of the first cities where Arup established an office and there has always been a dedication to the environment and local community. Sustainability is at the heart of the Arup ethos, with years of commitment into enabling buildings to have a smaller environmental footprint.

PRINTING.COM (www.printing.com) sponsored 2 films:

“Our business works because we’re as efficient as possible. We use as few resources as we can. Fewer resources mean less waste. And what’s more, we’ve been operating in this way long before it became fashionable to do so. Quite simply, we’re the leaders of the pack. So it made sense to get involved in Sheffield’s first environmental film festival, with PRINTING.COM providing 100% recycled promotional materials for the festival.”

The following organisations all sponsored one film each:

GREEN ESTATE (www.greenestate.org.uk)
The idea was pretty simple – if the relationship between the land and people were made to work again, just as they would in a country estate, we could bring life back to the green deserts and make the green environment a valued and productive asset. Making an inner city estate as attractive and successful as say, the Chatsworth Estate, is perhaps a slightly large ambition but every year the goal doesn’t seem quite so far off.

LEEDS CITY COUNCIL (www.leeds.gov.uk)

Climate change is becoming increasing important to the city and is now a key part of both the Leeds Strategic Plan and Council Business Plan. We have been working in partnership with organisations across the city to develop a city-wide Climate Change Strategy, due to be published this autumn. A draft is available on the Leeds Initiative website.

THE UNIVERSITY OF SHEFFIELD (www.sheffield.ac.uk)

Research into aspects of climate change – its causes and effects and how they might be mitigated – is a key area of the University’s research. This is demonstrated by the fact that of the University’s nine Interdisciplinary Research Networks, two concern climate change – one focuses on Energy, another on Global Environmental Change.

MORE! PRODUCTIONS (www.moreproductions.co.uk)

More! produce ‘plays in a day’ with young people. Our plays currently are Celebration of Life, Go Global and Do Yourself Justice. We are in the development stages of a new piece of work entitled ‘The Moving Environment’ which aims to look at how young people interact with the world around them. The Reduction Festival Film will help us to research the topic.

CARE4AIR (www.care4air.org)

The campaign aims to raise awareness of air quality issues and highlight what is happening in the region to improve the quality of our air. In particular, Care4Air aims to provide individuals, organisations, schools and businesses with information that will enable them to ‘do their bit’ and improve air quality.

SHEFFIELD INDEPENDENT FILM (www.sifmedia.org.uk)

Sheffield Independent Film Ltd (SIF) provides professional support and services to practitioners and audiences of the moving image. Our services include hire of our multi-purpose studio space as well rental of our comprehensive equipment production offices and conference facilities. We also provide production and technical consultancy in addition to media skills training.

SHEFFIELD COMMUNITY RENEWABLES (www.sheffieldcommunityrenewables.org.uk)

Sheffield Community Renewables (SCR) is a local voluntary group. We support and develop renewable energy projects in and around Sheffield. We are particularly interested in approaches, which benefit local people in addition to direct carbon savings. We are exploring various potential community scale schemes. We are also working with schools to support energy efficiency and renewable energy projects.

NATURAL ENGLAND (www.naturalengland.org.uk)

Natural England works for people, places and nature to conserve and enhance biodiversity, landscapes and wildlife in rural, urban, coastal and marine areas. We conserve and enhance the natural environment for its intrinsic value, the wellbeing and enjoyment of people, and the economic prosperity it brings.

YORKSHIRE AND THE HUMBER REGIONAL SKILLS PARTNERSHIP (www.yhrsp.com)
The RSP is concerned with ensuring that the ‘demands’ for skills from Businesses, Communities and Individuals are matched by the ‘suppliers’ of skills development (Education and Training providers) and are supported by the agencies/ organisations that fund or invest in skills training. Essentially the RSP aims to ensure that the Leitch Review is implemented in this region.

PEOPLE PROFIT PLANET (www.ppp-online.co.uk)

Using innovative methods of coaching and training PeopleProfitPlanet engages all staff in the environmental challenges we face. Using employees own ideas and energy they are guided to focus on what everyone can do to have a valuable impact on their organisation and the environment. This supports the organisations environmental policy making and so helping the individuals and employer on their green journey.

YORKSHIRE AND HUMBER REGIONAL ENVIRONMENT FORUM (www.yhref.org.uk)

YHREF is the environmental knowledge and advocacy network for the Yorkshire & Humber region. It is a collective of most major public and voluntary sector organisations in the region that have an interest in the environment. YHREF offers a space for those organisations to get together and develop consensus around key issues and how to improve the decisions that affect the environment.

THE ARCHIPELAGO WORKS (www.archipelago-art.co.uk)

The Archipelago Works, in an old cutlery factory in the heart of Sheffield’s Cultural Industries Quarter, is the home to an innovative art factory, incorporating digital and silkscreen studios, framemaking, and galleries for contemporary printmaking and painting.

All of the sponsors have also been very kind in helping to spread the word about Reduction so, once again, we salute you…

HOPE TO SEE YOU OVER THE WEEKEND!

Reduction Weekend – 18th/19th Oct

THIS WEEKEND (18th/19th Oct) – REDUCTION FESTIVAL at The Showroom Cinema, Sheffield

Given that Oktoberfest (Sheffield’s new beer and music festival!) is also taking place in the Showroom this weekend, there’s really no excuse not to come down now is there….

First of all, there are also 3 feature films screening over the weekend (contact the Showroom box office for tickets in the usual way – http://www.showroom.org.uk | 0114 275 7727):

Earth (Saturday 18th at 1:20pm)
Over five years in the making, this epic chronicle of life on the planet Earth was shot by 40 different filmmaking teams across 200 different countries and stands as one of the greatest nature documentaries ever produced. Originally a stunning BBC television programme, this special cinematic version is a trimmed down edit that lets you simply sit back and be blown away by some of the most beautiful imagery ever captured on film. Unmissable.

The Host (Saturday 18th at 3:30pm)
Whereas Godzilla was a product of the fears of the nuclear age, so comes the environmental effect in ‘The Host.’ A creature, mutated from the dumping of toxic waste in Seoul’s Han River, rises from the depths and lays waste to the sprawling metropolis… only the mild mannered, snack bar opening Park family stand in it’s way. Already one of the biggest films to come out of South Korea, the Host is a brilliantly entertaining creature feature with a non-too-subtle warning about the dangers of pollution.

A Crude Awakening (Sunday 19th at 3:45pm)
Produced and directed by award-winning European journalists and filmmakers Basil Gelpke and Ray McCormack, tells the story of how our civilization’s addiction to oil puts it on a collision course with geology. Compelling, intelligent, and highly entertaining, the film visits with the world’s top experts and comes to a startling, but logical conclusion – our industrial society, built on cheap and readily available oil, must be completely re-imagined and overhauled.

THEN, on Sunday 19th at 6pm, we have the SCREENING AND AWARDS EVENT for our 24/7 Filmmaking Challenge.

In a nutshell, about 20 short films will be screened (about 2 hours in total), most of which were produced as part of our 7 day challenge wherein filmmakers were randomly paired with environmental issues/ideas suggested by our sponsors and sent away to make a film. A panel of experts will judge the films and the prizes handed out. Will be fun for all. Get tickets quick from the Showroom box office (£3 each). We’ll all hang around in the bar for a while afterwards so it’ll be a good opportunity to meet you!