Happy days are here again. Greenbelt’s 19th annual Utopia Film Festival will celebrate the 90th birthday of FDR’s New Deal with the first New Deal Spirit Award for the film or animation which best reflects that spirit. Utopia, now in its 19th year, will be held in the New Deal city of Greenbelt on October 20 to 22. The winning entry, selected by a committee of volunteer festival screeners, will be shown that weekend in the city’s historic Old Greenbelt Theatre.
Submission Deadline
Filmmakers and animators must submit their work to Utopia through filmfreeway.com. The entry fee varies according to date of submission, with the final deadline for all entries Friday, August 4. The award-winning work must fall into one of three categories: a full-length documentary or full-length feature film (no longer than 90 minutes); a short doc or short feature (no longer than 30 minutes); or a work of animation.
New Deal Connection
Greenbelt was one of three idealistically-planned green towns built by Franklin Roosevelt’s Resettlement Administration. The experimental towns were intended to move Depression-era city families from blighted neighborhoods to healthier suburban villages. Greenbelt, built in 1936-37, was the first completed and the most controversial. Town businesses were organized as consumer cooperatives, and critics dubbed Roosevelt advisor Rexford Tugwell “Rex the Red” for his egalitarian views. The city is considered a planning landmark, and attracts visitors from around the world.
Utopia Executive Director Chris Haley, nephew of Roots author Alex Haley and director of slavery research for the Maryland State Archives, shared his thoughts about honoring the birth of the New Deal.
“I think, especially where we are as a nation right now, this new award will remind us what the New Deal represented: better opportunities to live if we act together as one community. Granted, the initial implementation, highly segregated, didn’t create that reality. However, the ideal is one that we should always strive to achieve. The Utopia Film Festival wants to remind and recognize that spirit in film.”
For more information about the all-volunteer Utopia Film Festival, see utopiafilmfestival.org or contact the festival committee at utopiafilmfest20770@gmail.com.