News - Project Selection Good Pitch Europe 2012

LONDON - The lineup for Good Pitch Europe 2012, which returns to the Royal Institution of Great Britain in London on Monday 25th June, has been announced.

Good Pitch is a partnership between the BRITDOC Foundation and The Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program. Running several times throughout the year in the US and Europe, as both standalone events and in conjunction with bespoke conferences and film festivals, it brings together specially selected foundations, NGOs, social entrepreneurs, governmental agencies, media and potential corporate and brand partners to form powerful alliances around groundbreaking films. Seven filmmaking teams pitch their film and associated outreach campaign to the assembled audience with the aim of creating a unique coalition around each film to maximise its impact and influence.

It is an invitation­‐only event and will start with an intensive two­‐day campaign development workshop for the filmmakers, followed by a day­‐long live event which brings together documentary films and organisations with social change and innovation at their heart. The day after the event is given over to a series of one‐on-one meetings between the pitching filmmakers and attending organisations brokered by the Good Pitch Europe Outreach team.

The international line up of filmmakers includes multi-­award and Palme d’Or winner Ken Loach (Spirit of ’45), the Egyptian­‐American director of Control Room and Startup.com, Jehane Noujaim (The Square), Fredrik Gertten with his sequel to Bananas!*, Big Boys Gone Bananas, and Brazilian filmmaker and TED fellow Julia Bacha (My Neighbourhood). Also on the lineup are French director Florence Martin­‐Kessler (State Builders), Pekka Lehto with his project Kaputt and the UK/American directors of Call me Kuchu, Malika Zouhali‐Worrall & Katherine Fairfax Wright.

The projects will be pitched – together with their associated outreach campaigns – to an invited group of leading European foundations, NGOs, policymakers, brands, advertising and digital agencies, social entrepreneurs and media organisations with the aim of creating unique coalitions around each film to accelerate its social and political impact and influence.

A project of the BRITDOC Foundation in partnership with the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program, the team worked with staff and advisors to choose the films for this edition of Good Pitch.

The seven selected projects are the work of a raft of international filmmakers, featuring stories from across the globe. These documentaries explore the European financial crisis, the plight of freedom of speech in the face of resistance from multinational companies, state-building and the emerging democracy of South Sudan, the fight for LGBT rights in Uganda, nonviolent protest and community activism in East Jerusalem, the legacy of 1940’s socialism in the UK and the 21st century revolution in Egypt.

Good Pitch Europe 2012 is the second of three events in 2012. The first event takes place at the Ford Foundation in New York on May 24th and the final event of the year will visit San Francisco on October 23rd. For more information on Good Pitch events in 2012, see www.britdoc.org/goodpitch.

For more information about Good Pitch, contact Elise McCave at the BRITDOC Foundation: elise@britdoc.org or on +44 7980 986 862.