International short film festival "Quantum Shorts" launches

Fancy yourself as a film-maker? Interested in quantum physics? This is the competition for you!

The ARC Centre of Excellence for Engineered Quantum Systems is pleased to announce the launch of Quantum Shorts 2016, a festival for short films that draw inspiration from quantum physics.

Quantum physics, which describes the behaviour of matter at atomic and subatomic scales, has long provided inspiration for artists, writers, film-makers and philosophers.

“We think that filmmakers are like quantum physicists: driven by curiosity, creativity and passion. Please take our big ideas, strange theories and invisible effects and make them yours,” said quantum physicist Artur Ekert, who will be a judge for the festival’s top prizes. He is also Director of the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore, the organiser of Quantum Shorts.

He added, “We are very happy to be working with partners all over the world to present the Quantum Shorts 2016 film festival.” 

The other judges for Quantum Shorts are:

• writer and filmmaker Alex Winter, whose most recent film, the award-winning documentary Deep Web, had its world premiere at the SXSW film festival in 2015 
• physicist Brian Greene, Professor at Columbia University, who is a best-selling author and co-founder of the World Science Festival
• Charlotte Stoddart and Eliene Augenbraun from Nature Publishing Group’s multimedia team, who create engaging video and audio stories for Nature and Scientific American, and
• curator Honor Harger, Executive Director for the ArtScience Museum, Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. 

A shortlisting panel will select up to ten submissions to be shown by the festival’s screening partners, to include Singapore's ArtScience Museum, the Gallery of Modern Art in Brisbane, Australia and Glasgow Science Centre in the UK. The screenings will take place in 2017.

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 will be decided by public vote on the shortlist. 

The Quantum Shorts contest series is now in its fifth year, having alternated between annual calls for fiction and films since 2012.

Scientific American, the longest continuously published magazine in the U.S., and Nature, the international weekly journal of science, are media partners for the festival. The festival has also partnered with leading quantum research centres and prestigious museums and galleries in five countries. 

Further information, inspiration and resources can be found at: http://shorts.quantumlah.org. Competition submission deadline is December 1, 2016.