Worldwide Success for First Light Filmmakers

There are few things more motivating for young filmmakers and the professionals working with them than knowing their film will be seen. The opportunity to showcase their talent is often the highpoint of the project.

Many First Light films have won awards and scooped prizes at worldwide film festivals, taken up by international broadcasters and even seen on Atlantic flights.

Screening success has reached all corners of the Earth from the Videotivoli Festival in Finland; Echo Park Festival, Los Angeles; National Arts Festival, South Africa; Seoul Festival Korea and Little Big Shots Festival, Australia. Last year saw First Light films shown at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival – Cannes in a Van, the world’s smallest mobile film festival!

Please see below for more…

• EplusTV6, a small city-wide non-commercial TV station in Jackson, Tennessee broadcast Too Many Cooks in February 2010.

• Happy Face Entertainment in Lagos is interested in bringing the vision of First Light to young people in Nigeria, using First Light Award winning films to inspire them.

• A jury of kindergarten-aged children chose The Island by Stockton Borough Council as the Best Film in the Leffis film festival in Finland and awarded it their Moviebug Prize.

• The Ragdoll Girl won and One Week Later came runner-up in the Live Action category for 15-18 year olds at The Shortie Awards in America.

• A documentary filmmaker lecturing at University of Tasmania is heading an academic research project that will look at what children want in documentary and how they engage with documentary, using First Light documentaries as examples.

• Last Chance, Final Rep by GMAC was selected for the 12th Edition Auburn International Film Festival for Children and Young Adults in Australia.

• The Island has been selected for the special youth programme ‘School of Life-expanded’, taking place between May 2010 – 2011. ‘School of Life-expanded’ is a yearlong educational programme, supervised by members of britspotting, the British/Irish Film Festival and will take place in class rooms all over Berlin and Potsdam, Germany.