Opportunities don’t come much bigger than this if you love films and the documentary creation process.
Kennicott student Dylan Friese-Green is travelling this week to Stanford, USA to be part of the 10-day 2016 UNAFF as a representative of the Transition Town Totnes Film Festival. UNAFF (United Nations Association Film Festival) is in its 19th year, and it will be held from 20th – 30th October 2016 in Palo Alto, Stanford University, East Palo Alto and San Francisco.
This year’s theme ‘COMPASS FOR A BETTER WORLD’ continues the ongoing celebration of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and focuses on various aspects of the Sustainable Development Goals. As one of the oldest solely documentary film festivals in the US, UNAFF has grown and earned the respect of audiences and filmmakers alike for its fearless independence and integrity. It prides itself in creating a community forum with year-round programs for discovery and dialogue about different cultures, issues and solutions.
A spokesperson for the Transition Town Totnes Film Festival is quoted as saying “Our aim for our weekend festival in March 2017 is to engage with as many members of the wider community as possible through; showing thought provoking and empowering films and documentaries, facilitating creative events, discussions and debates and running workshops, around the issue of ‘transition’, which is in itself is a wide encompassing subject matter. To this end for the past few months, we have been looking into how we can work with all members of our community and we have come up with a number of interesting solutions which we are currently implementing. One of our partners this year is UNAFF, so when we were offered the chance to send a young ambassador to Stanford to present us, Dylan was an obvious choice. Dylan joined the steering committee for the 2017 Transition Town Totnes Film Festival in June this year, he is; diligent, intelligent and visionary and we are excited that he has been able to take up this opportunity. We are currently in discussions with an educational establishment in Spain and we, therefore, hope to create other opportunities for International travel for our ambassadors over the coming months”.
Dylan’s residency at the UNAFF festival has been fully funded by UNAFF and during his time in the States, he will be part of the team of volunteers who ensure the success of the festival.
The Transition Totnes Film Festival will be creating other exciting opportunities for people in the community over the next few months in the run up to the event so if you would like to register to become a volunteer or be part of the festival in anyway in March 2017 contact them via www.transitionfilmfestival.org.uk
