Friday, August 8, 2014

THE CLIFFIES - an annual film awards event for best ''cli fi'' movies of the year

THE CLIFFIES will be awarded in March 2015. Nominations welcome here in comments or by email for best movie, best director, best actors, best set design, best costumes, best music, best PR/marketing campaign =========================================================================================================================================================== Seán Ó Heigeartaigh, academic project manager at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, part of the Oxford Martin School, writes in a NYT oped headlined ''Hollywood Global Warming Dramas Can Start an International Conversation" ------------------------------------------------ ''Science fiction prepares us for thinking about the future: many of the sciences and technologies we take for granted today were predicted well ahead of time in sci-fi stories. It can help us imagine deeply changed worlds — like the technology-empowered surveillance state of George Orwell’s "1984" that most of us would want to avoid, or the more optimistic post-scarcity future of Star Trek, where principles of equality are deeply engrained. ==================================== Thankfully, recent cli-fi novels have been much more sophisticated and rooted in science. They focus on the more subtle, early impacts of climate change (as in Barbara Kingsolver's "Flight Behavior" and Saci Lloyd's "The Carbon Diaries 2015"), on the lives of scientists, activists and others working on climate-related challenges (as in Ian McEwan's "Solar" and Nathaniel Rich's "Odds Against Tomorrow"), or on how life will change for ordinary people in the future as the effects of climate change slowly and relentlessly become more severe (as in Hamish MacDonald's "Finitude" or Paolo Bacigalupi's "The Windup Girl.")========================================= In the end, the greatest contribution of this [new emerging Hollywood genre] may be to cause us to care. Great writing [and movie making] draws us into the lives and circumstances of people we will never, ever meet. We know on an intellectual level that we are the caretakers of the world our great-grandchildren will inherit, a world that will be affected by our present-day actions or inactions. However, it’s another thing to care enough to change our actions now, and to pressure our governments and corporations to do the same. If cli-fi causes us to think both with our heads and our hearts about our responsibility to future generations, it may yet change the world.''

1 comment:

DANIELBLOOM said...

QUESTION: Can you explain the purpose of THE CLIFFIES? Is it to raise
the profile of the cli fi genre in Hollywood and among Hollywood
players? Is that why you are putting on this annual event, starting in
early 2015?

QUESTION: THE CLIFFIES top winners will be announced a week before the
OSCARS telecast? What is the reasoning behind that?

QUESTION: Who is sponsoring THE CLIFFIES? Where is the money coming
from to put the show on? Will it be telecast or live-tweeted or just
announced online?

QUESTION: Where are the nomiantions for THE CLIFFIES coming in from?
And who will decide on the list of winners?

QUESTION: Cli fi is a new genre, so new that most people have not
heard of it. Are you worried that by calling your film awards event
THE CLIFFIES -- a semi-goofy nickname, to say the least! -- the
official name of the CLI FI MOVIE AWARDS might get lost in the shuffle
between social media and print media?

QUESTION: What was the inspiration for your wanting to set up THE CLIFFIES?

QUESTION: Are THE CLIFFIES more of an educational, awareness-raising
awards event than a glitzy glamor Hollywood celebrity VIP thing? In
other words, who are you trying to reach and is this more of a PR
event than a real film awards event?

QUESTION: As THE CLIFFIES grow year by year, do you envision a time
when the awards ceremony will be hosted at a Hollywood venue, complete
with professional MC and a few celebrity guests?

QUESTION: If the CLIFFIES become popular inside Hollywood and
worldwide as well via social media, can you imagine the day when an
OSCARS award winner acceptance speech calls his or her movie a cli fi
movie and uses the word CLI FI on air for all the world to hear?

QUESTION: How long do you envision THE CLIFFIES lasting? Is this a
one-time thing or do you see it lasting 50 years, 100 years?

QUESTION: Lois Lowry, author of THE GIVER novel in 1993 that became a
movie in 2014 was recently asked by a reporter for USA TODAY why so
many Hollywood futures appear to be dystopian, as in her book and
movie. She replied: "That's a good question. Maybe in dramatic terms,
utopia is boring." Do you agree with her?

QUESTION: Anything else you want to say about THE CLIFFIES and how you
hope it might impact Hollywood movies in future years, given that
movies often take years and year to get greenlighted and we might not
see too many cli fi movies in Hollywood for another 25 years or so?
Is the CLIFFIES a beginning? Are you trying to sound the alarm about
climate change issues in cinema? Are you issuing a wake up call to
movie critics and PR units and marketing people inside Hollywood?