TED Prize Filmmaker AwardTED Prize Filmmaker Award
Filmmaker Jerry Rothwell Receives First Annual Sundance Institute | TED Prize Filmmaker Award
Sundance Institute and TED, the nonprofit known for "ideas worth spreading," announced that filmmaker Jerry Rothwell has been selected to receive the first-ever Sundance Institute | TED Prize Filmmaker Award – the centerpiece of which is a grant of $125,000 to make a documentary film about the 2013 TED Prize winner Sugata Mitra and his wish, "A School in the Cloud." The prize was awarded during the TEDGlobal 2013 Conference, taking place June 10 to 14, 2013 in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Selected from a highly competitive pool of outstanding global submissions, the UK-based Rothwell and his producers – Al Morrow and Dan Demissie – proposed a film, Like Whirlwinds, that will look at the development of Mitra's latest and most ambitious project, "A School in the Cloud." The school is a learning lab in India that taps into children's innate curiosity and instinct to teach each other. Told from the perspectives of impoverished Indian children who speak no English and have little-to-no access to education, a retired school teacher in the UK who teaches and mentors these young people via the internet, and low-income students in Gateshead, England, who represent a new front in Mitra's visionary educational experiment, Rothwell's film asks the questions: is our current model for educating children an obsolete remnant of a bygone era?
Keri Putnam, Executive Director of Sundance Institute, said, "We congratulate Jerry Rothwell and his team as they begin an exciting journey to bring to life the extraordinary vision of Sugata Mitra's large-scale collaborative project, providing a record of his work and an inspiring way for audiences to engage with the ideas behind it."
The Sundance Institute | TED Prize Filmmaker Award will be offered each year to one filmmaker to document the winner of the annual TED Prize, awarded each year to an individual with a world-changing wish.
Lara Stein (TED Prize director), Dan Demissie (producer), Jerry Rothwell, Sugata Mitra (TED Prize winner), Chris Anderson (TED Global host)
Mitra, the recipient of the 2013 TED Prize, wished to create the School in the Cloud as an extension of his famous 1999 "hole in the wall" experiment. The experiment showed him that children, when left alone, can effectively teach themselves. From this and further research, Mitra developed the concept of SOLEs (Self Organized Learning Environments), which embraces a process where educators ask the kids big questions, leading them on intellectual journeys rather than asking them to just memorize facts.
With the TED Prize, Mitra has developed a SOLE toolkit for others to tap into this method – and is creating the School in the Cloud: a learning environment that is overseen entirely by a global network of mediators. These mediators are retired teachers who Skype in through the Cloud. The school, and a series of labs to be built across India and the UK, will serve as both education and research centers to further explore self-directed learning globally.
ABOUT SUNDANCE INSTITUTE | TED PRIZE FILMMAKER AWARD
Sundance Institute and TED believe in the power of non-fiction storytelling and are announcing an initiative to create a short film and multi-platform campaign around the annual TED Prize winner with the goal of raising awareness of their work.
As part of the TED Prize, Sundance Institute's Documentary Film Program (DFP) is launching an RFP for a TED Prize Filmmaker Award. One winner will be awarded $125,000 to produce and deliver a cinematic short film. Prize money must also cover qualifying the short film for Academy Awards consideration. The award winner will film the TED Prize winner during the course of their first year after receiving the TED Prize, with the goal of crafting a cinematic independent short documentary film of up to 45 minutes in length, suitable for Academy Award short film consideration. In addition, the winner will craft a plan for a multi-platform presence for the project's content in shorter formats, including promos, a trailer and a 3-5 minute version of the film. This content will reflect first year of activities related to the TED Prize winner's project, and be made available to Sundance Institute, TED and the TED Prize winner for their non-exclusive use in perpetuity. The copyright will remain with the filmmakers.
Film projects must be completed within 18 months of the Award announcement, with clips to be delivered and screened the following year at TED Long Beach.
ABOUT THE TED PRIZE
The TED Prize begins with a big wish—a wish to inspire thinkers and doers across the globe. The Prize is awarded to an extraordinary individual with a creative and bold vision to spark global change. TED awards Prize winners $1 million to inspire dreamers to think bigger about what's possible. By leveraging the TED community's resources and investing in a powerful idea, the TED Prize offers support to build a high-impact project's core infrastructure quickly--so that others can add their own collaborative action.
Education innovator Sugata Mitra is the winner of the 2013 TED Prize.
His wish: Build a School in the Cloud, where children can explore and learn from one another.
To learn more about the TED Prize, go to ted.com/prize.
AWARD CRITERIA
- The story creates appreciation and deeper understanding of the TED Prize winner’s work, vision, challenges and accomplishments in the context of the larger issues they are grappling with.
- The project displays directorial vision/aesthetic and has the potential for theatrical release.
- The project highlights the work of the TED Prize winner over the course of their first (12-18 months) after receiving the award.
- Intended project length is between 25:00-49:00
- The project is independently produced, with creative control held by the producing/directing team.
FAQ
If you have questions about applying for the Sundance Institute | TED Filmmaker Prize, click here for our FAQ.
If you have further questions, please e-mail us at dfpted@sundance.org.
History of the TED Prize
The first TED Prize was awarded in 2005, born out of the TED Conference and a vision by the world's leading entrepreneurs, innovators, and entertainers to change the world – one wish at a time.
From Bono's the ONE Campaign ('05 recipient) to Jamie Oliver 's Food Revolution ('10 recipient) and JR's Inside Out Project ('11 recipient), the TED Prize has helped to combat poverty, take on religious intolerance, improve global health, tackle child obesity, advance education, and inspire art around the world. Since the birth of the Prize nine years ago, TED Prize winning initiatives have raised $17 million dollars for ocean protection, helped over 650,000 children in LA schools eat healthier, and inspired over 100,000 people to engage in participatory art project portraits worldwide.