A new funding round opened on 16 November. A focus for this current round of funding surrounds documentaries and First Light have partnered with The Grierson Trust to encourage documentary making amongst young filmmakers. To support this, we have ring-fenced 30% of the grant allocation in this current round to fund documentaries. Together with The Grierson Trust, we also commissioned Award winning filmmaker, Daisy Asquith, to produce a great ‘how to’ film which we hope will help to inspire engaging and creative documentaries. If you haven’t seen the film, Keep it Real, you can view it here

The deadline for submissions is Tuesday 11 January 2011.

We continue to accept applications for Pilot and Studio that focus on and are inspired by one of the Olympic or Paralympic ideals under the Film Nation: Shorts project and also continue to encourage the use of archive in filmmaking with young people.

The BFI have provided a selection of archive films that can be used to inspire your film or to be used as part of the film. If any of you are interested in seeing these, you can view them here.

The films from the BFI National Archive show Britain at various moments in the 20th century, revealing a range of different and changing attitudes to social and economic issues. They provide a great focus for young people interested in making films about the society in which we live. We’ve also devised a really handy guide to creating films using archive footage, which is available from the website.
View the films made available by BFI National Archive and decide which ones you’d like to use for your project.
Click here for more information on how to apply for a filmmaking grant from the Young Film Fund.