This year, to accommodate challenges presented by COVID-19, the fund offered two new grants to support online promotion of French digital experiences in the United States.
As society pivots toward the digital in the wake of restrictions imposed by COVID-19, creative experience studios are rethinking their online promotion and distribution strategy tactics. In this context, the French Immersion program, presented by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, the CNC, the Institut Français, Uni France and the FACE Foundation, has reconfigured its grant program to support 15 artists and creators in two categories: production of promotional videos, and promotion of an immersive experience on social media or content platforms.
The partners are pleased to note the success of this initiative, with nearly 45 applications received.
The five recipients of the $2,000 grants for the production of promotional videos to be broadcasted on social networks and content platforms are:
- Battlescar – Atlas V
- HanaHana – Fabbula
- MOA (My Own Assistant) – Red Corner
- OZ Experience – BackLight
- Call me Calamity – Tamanoir
The 10 recipients of the $1,000 grants to promote an immersive experience on social media or on content platforms are:
- Accused#2: Walter SISULU – La Générale de Production
- Bioluminescence, First Contact – IKO
- Le Cri – Cinétévé
- Les Falaises de V. – Gengiskhan Production
- Les Passagers – Les Produits Frais
- Madrid Noir – Atlas V
- I will sleep when I’m dead – Aurore Wils
- Kairos – Small Creative
- The Jellyfish – Fabbula
- Seven Grams – Lucid Realities.
About French Immersion
Created in 2018 by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States, in partnership with the FACE Foundation, the CNC, the Institut Français and UniFrance, French Immersion is a program that aims to promote French immersive experiences in the United States. It provides support to works selected in major American festivals. The partners have also launched “FR//XR”, a study on the distribution and financing of XR works conducted by Kaleidoscope and to be published at the end of 2020.
Partners of the Program
The Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States promote the best of French arts, literature, cinema, digital innovation, language, and higher education across the US. Based in New York City, Washington D.C., and eight other cities across the country, the Cultural Services brings artists, authors, intellectuals, and innovators to cities nationwide. It also builds partnerships between French and American artists, institutions, and universities on both sides of the Atlantic.
FACE Foundation is an American nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting French-American relations through innovative cultural and educational projects. With additional corporate, foundation, and individual support, FACE administers grant programs in the performing and visual arts, cinema, translation, and secondary and higher education, while providing financial sponsorship to French-American festivals and other cultural initiatives.
The Institut français is a public institution under the aegis of the French Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs and of the Ministry of Culture responsible for French cultural actions abroad. Its initiatives cover various artistic fields, intellectual exchanges, cultural and social innovation, and linguistic cooperation. Throughout the world, it promotes the French language, as well as he mobility of artworks, artists and ideas, and thus works to foster cultural understanding.
For more than 70 years, UniFrance has been using its experience of the international marketplace to support French cinema worldwide. UniFrance is based in Paris and also has representatives for New York, Beijing and Southeast Asia. Its membership brings together around 1,000 French producers, filmmaking talents, agents and sales companies, which are working together to promote French film among foreign audiences, industry executives and media. UniFrance supports, as long as feature and short films, the international promotion of immersive projects and creators throughout the world.
Created in 1946, the Centre national du cinéma et de l’image animée (CNC) is a public administrative organization, set up as a separate and financially independent entity which comes under the authority of the French ministry of culture and communication. Its principal missions are regulatory: support for the film, broadcast, video, video games, immersive productions and technical industries; promotion of film and television for distribution to all audiences and preservation and development of the film heritage.