Documentaries: Do it Yourself

Official call for entries:

No-one sees the world the way you do. The BBC wants to see things from your perspective – and create a unique picture of our lives today across the planet.

We are asking you to use any camera you can find – a mobile phone, a point-and-click, or a friend’s camcorder – and shoot a two-minute documentary with the theme MyWorld. We are looking for original films that you think the world should know about and will shortlist films that are emotionally touching, important or visually impactful.

The best will then be selected by a panel of the world’s top documentary makers and assembled into sequences showing the stories of each continent.

About the Competition

We are looking for entries from across the planet

You can interpret the MyWorld theme any way you choose. Your film could be a compelling personal story, tell of a place that is changing, or document the joy or difficulty of your work life.

Each film must be relevant to one of the five major continents – Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia and Oceania – and must be tagged as such. You can shoot a single shot documentary, if appropriate to your story, or edit your film with any editing software available to you.

A selection of all work received may be shown on TV and online and an ultimate winner will be selected based on the judging criteria.

After submissions close, five prestigious MyWorld curators will each be assigned films from a particular continent. From each, they will choose and assemble a sequence of up to ten of the best films creating a fascinating portrait of the world today.

Finally each of the five curated sequences will be available to view online and on BBC World News. An overall winner will then be chosen and receive a prize of a semi-professional HD mini DV camcorder.

No-one sees the world the way you do. Make and enter a short film about life from your perspective and you could be broadcast around the world by the BBC (Closing date 1600 GMT March 12 2010)

Judges

Americas – Cara Mertes, Director, Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program
Europe – Greg Sanderson, Executive Producer, BBC Storyville
Africa – Mandisa Zitha, Festival Director, Encounters Documentary Festival
Asia – Fujioka Asako, Director, Yamagata International Documentary Film Festival Tokyo Office
Oceania – Stuart Menzies, Head of Documentaries, theclick Australian Broadcast Corporation (ABC)

The closing date for the competition is 12 March 2010 so just under 2 weeks left to enter.

More information is on their website: www.bbcworldservice.com/myworld

You can also follow the competition via their twitter account: www.twitter.com/bbc_myworld