Lights, camera, action! The Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies is calling for entries to the celebrated Quantum Shorts film festival. The festival is free to enter, and open to amateur and professional film-makers who want to tell stories that draw inspiration from quantum physics.
“Quantum physics invites us to look at the world in new ways,” says quantum physicist Artur Ekert, who will be a judge for the festival’s top prizes. Ekert is also Director of the Centre for Quantum Technologies (CQT) at the National University of Singapore, the organiser of Quantum Shorts. Quantum physics, he explains, allows things to experience spooky connections across space and time, and can power new forms of computing and cryptography. “We are confident that, as in previous years, passionate, creative people from across the globe will use this extraordinary science to inspire extraordinary films,” Ekert says.
New Zealand’s Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies is a partner with the festival. Other partners include leading quantum research centres and prestigious museums and galleries. Scientific American, the longest continuously published magazine in the US, and Nature, the international weekly journal of science, are the festival’s media partners.
Dodd-Walls Centre Director Professor David Hutchison says, “Quantum physics has given us a new lens through which to observe the world around us. I’m looking forward to seeing how this might also inspire film-makers to express their ideas in new and creative ways.”
After entries close on 1 December 2018, a shortlisting panel will select up to ten submissions to be shown by the festival’s scientific and screening partners, which include the ArtScience Museum at Marina Bay Sands in Singapore and the Otago Museum’s Perpetual Guardian Planetarium. The screenings will take place in 2019.
The festival’s top prize of US $1500 and runner-up prize of US $1000 will be decided by a panel of eminent judges. An additional prize of US $500 will be decided by public vote on the shortlist. All shortlisted films will receive a US $250 screening fee and earn their maker a one-year digital subscription to Scientific American.
Winners will receive in addition a trophy and cash prizes. The first prize winner will also be featured on ScientificAmerican.com.
As well as Ekert, the judges include Alex Winter, actor, writer and director of films including Deep Web and the upcoming Trust Machine; Brian Greene, renowned physicist, author and broadcaster; Eliene Augenbraun from Nature Research Group’s multimedia team, who creates engaging video and audio stories for Nature and Scientific American; curator Honor Harger, Executive Director for the ArtScience Museum, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore; and Jamie Lochhead, an award-winning producer and director of documentary films.
Quantum Shorts has alternated between annual calls for short films and fiction since 2012.
The competition’s scientific partners this year are the Australian Research Council Centre for Engineered Quantum Systems; the Dodd-Walls Centre for Photonic and Quantum Technologies, the Institute for Quantum Computing at the University of Waterloo, Canada; the Institute for Quantum Information and Matter at Caltech in the United States; QuTech, a collaboration of Delft University of Applied Sciences and Dutch innovation center TNO; and the UK National Quantum Technologies Programme.
Submissions to Quantum Shorts 2018 can be entered via the website at http://shorts.quantumlah.org, which also features resources on quantum physics and a full set of rules and guidelines. The deadline for entries is 23:59 GMT, 1 December 2018.