We love Crowdfunding here at Doc/Fest. Last year's crowd funding pitch raised 1500 for the winning project, and we want to top that this year. This is a high-profile chance to show the international film world that Crowdfunding really works and that collaboration is where it's at in 2011 for filmmaking. The revolution is on, join the charge.

Last year we introduced the European doc world to Crowdfunding - you can watch what happened right here. Now we're going one better with a whole day devoted to Crowdfunding, in which this pitch will be the centrepiece of showcasing community funding in action.

So if you like documentaries and factual media, and you want to advocate for a new collaborative style of doing business, pay attention, we need YOU to support the Current Crowdfunding Pitch.... 

How does it work?

We've selected five projects who will pitch live on stage on Saturday 11th June at Sheffield Doc/Fest in the Current Crowdfunding Pitch - you can read about them all here, and there's short teasers for them all in the clip. We're asking you to pledge money to a central pot. We'll then ask the audience to decide on an overall winner who will win the pot.

The more you raise, the better the demonstration that Crowdfunding is a truly great way to mobilise fans, followers, friends and your community into being your your philanthropists, your investors, your audience and your PR people all at once.

The Current Crowdfunding Pitch

Current has joined the crowdfunding revolution, joining us in asking our combined communities of documentary makers and lovers to contribute to the Current Crowdfunding Pitch.

Supported by Current (Sky 183 / Virgin Media 155 / current.com) five top international projects will compete to win a pot of money crowdfunded from Doc/Fest's delegates and community. These five projects will pitch on stage as part of Sheffield Doc/Fest's crowdfunding day on Saturday June 11th. They'll need to impress the audience with their outreach and community engagement plan as much as the project's content - these are films and projects that understand how to build and maintain fans, followers and communities.

What are the projects? 

Dancing With Hugo Boss (Heather Leach) - In 2008 I was working as a television documentary director and trying to manage a serious thyroid condition when I was unexpectedly diagnosed with cancer.  Told entirely from my point of view Dancing with Hugo Boss will take a personal look at the importance of life, love and mortality through my story.  It is a film about refusing to be the victim to illness and instead to grab it by the balls and take it line dancing.

Funding raised at this stage would start to move the outreach campaign forward and support others impacted by long-term ill health conditions.

[NO-RES] (Xavier Artigas) is a story about gentrification, the chronicle of the end of a working-class neighborhood in Barcelona, a space where the streets are more than a place to pass throughthey are a space to live.

[NO-RES] is a free culture project betting on Creative Commons licenses and distributed through the net in a free way, as well as the big screen. We use crowdfunding to cover our expenses. [NO-RES] looks for thousands of producers.

[NO-RES] is currently under post-production and needs a last, gentle prod of funding to cover the costs of audio mixing rooms. More information about the status of this project can be found at www.no-res.cc/en

Nothing Like Chocolate A Feature Documentary (Kum-Kum Bhavnani) - Deep in the rain forests of Grenada, anarchist chocolate-maker, Mott Green, invents sustainable solutions to the problems within the chocolate industry. Enslaved children in Ivory Coast harvest cocoa (40% of the worlds cocoa comes from Ivory Coast), but the headstrong and relentless Mott Green does things differently. Organic cocoa beans, solar power and small-scale antique equipment pump out delicious chocolate in a co-operative in Grenada. Enslaved children in Ivory Coast, an anarchist chocolatier, the smallest chocolate company in the world there must be a film about all of this.  This is a story that has waited too long.

Nothing Like Chocolate began when I learnt about the horrors of Ivory Coast chocolate harvesting enslaved children, dangerous equipment, cruel bosses. I want to tell those stories, but I also want to show how things are done differently. The crew has been paid almost nothing for their work, despite being one of the most committed and conscientious group of people I have ever worked with. I have raised over $100,000 for the film. I will use the funds to pay for an original score, and have got a talented composer who is prepared to score the documentary for $3,700 (2000).

To be Heard (Roland Legiardi-Laura) - The most powerful tool for personal and social transformation is literacy.  Power Poetry, will be the worlds first mobile/online poetry community for youth. It will be a literacy engine for young people. The idea for this project grew directly from the themes and stories of our documentary, To Be Heard. The idea is simple: Kids live on their cellphones. Turn these hunks of plastic into weapons of creativity and social engagement.  Imagine young people around the world creating poetry and linking their poems to the innumerable organizations that work for change.  Imagine creating your own Poemisode (video, audio, text) using your cellphone and linking it to an NGO fighting hungerPower Poetry is the volatile mix of creativity, technology and action. Imagine   What we most need right now is the money to organize a proper beta test of our new platform.

Sandgrains (Jordie Montevecchi and Gabriel Manrique) - In Cape Verde, fishing is not only a way of life but a vital source of income. As the global fish population falls, the EU is plundering the islands precious resource. Jos returns to his country to witness his fellow islanders fighting for survival, selling the very sand that makes up their beaches. This project is designed to aggregate support, talent and expertise through web 2.0 technology and social networks. It uses crowd-funding and crowd-sourcing as production strategy and aims to reach out to an informed, global audience that performs a vital role in driving the project itself.

The Sandgrains Team is now crowd-funding production finances for getting the crew to Cape Verde

What's the Background?

Sheffield Doc/Fest is the UK's major festival, marketplace and conference for documentary and factual media, taking place from June 8th-12th. We like to be at the forefront of new developments in the funding, distributing, exhibiting and outreaching of docs. The Crowdfunding Day and Current Crowdfunding Pitch especially are a key part of this and we can't wait to share our ideas with you and hear your take on Crowdfunding on Saturday June 11th in Sheffield, Yorkshire, UK

What we need and what's in it for you?

We're looking for 2000 (roughly that's $3200) to award to the winning pitch - these projects are all at different stages, so it may help with development, production, post-production, outreach or another side of making their film. We've asked the filmmakers to tell you in the section above.We hope you'll get a warm glow inside from being part of this new way of doing things....but we also know that you like prizes and special treats so there's lots on offer if you can contribute - from handshakes to your very own personal doc being made, through to being named as the main sponsor of the crowdfunding day at Doc/Fest. 

And then what?

Come and see the 5 projects pitch live on stage at Doc/Fest on Saturday 11th June. Or watch them streamed live on the Cuban Hat here - http://www.cubanhat.tv - and vote for your winner. But if you can't make it, we'll send you a full report on the Crowdfunding Day after the festival anyway.

Who are the Filmmakers?

Heather Leach is established in producing poignant and humorous character led documentaries for the BBC and Channel 4. She has received RTS nominations and much acclaim for a series of cross-platform documentaries she series produced.

[NO-RES] is directed by Xavier Artigas, a 31 years old sociologist and filmmaker, established his own producer company, Metromuster, to experiment with art, sociology and politics. In this line, he has directed three short documentaries for TVC, a reportage about art and activism for TVE and several short pieces about traditional holidays in Barcelona. 

Kum-Kum Bhavnani is a university professor by day and a film-maker by night. I migrated to the UK from India when I was a very young, studied at Bristol, Nottingham and Cambridge universities, and worked in Leeds, Sheffield, and London. In 1991, I emigrated to the USA and began working as an academic at the University of California Santa Barbara. My passion for film-making began in 2003, when I started work on The Shape of Water, a feature documentary, narrated by Susan Sarandon (http://www.theshapeofwatermovie.com). That premiered in 2006, has screened around the world, and garnered a number of awards and I am hooked!

Roland Legiardi-Laura is a poet, teacher, documentary filmmaker, and troublemaker (social activist). His first film, AZUL told the story of people of Nicaragua, through their poetry. He founded the first traveling troupe of performance poets, Words To Go. As one of the directors of the renowned arts institution, The Nuyorican Poets Caf, he created a unique film development program called The Fifth Night, which produced 213 weekly screenplay readings. Forty of those scripts were made into feature films.  He is currently developing a documentary about the secret history of American schooling, titled Weapons of Mass Instruction. To Be Heard, the film upon which Power Poetry is based, premiered at the DOC NYC film festival in late 2010 where it won both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award.

Jordie Montevecchi and Gabriel Manrique have been working together on challenging projects since 2008. Their films are inspired by a background in anthropology, and a lifetime of traveling. Their desire is to make an impact, and they believe the documentary medium is a way of achieving this because film is accessible to a wide audience. They are convinced that real change comes from below, and that this can only be realized if a wide audience are made aware of the issues our societies are facing. In January 2009 Gabriel and Jordie sparked Matchbox Media Collective, a creative multimedia network aimed at renovating the way we produce and consume media.