We have officially closed submissions on the 2015 edition of the New Urbanism Film Festival.  This year we received a total of 241 films.

We’ll spend the next month reviewing the films and announcing the participating films in this year’s fest.  We’d like to thank all of the filmmakers. The films we’ve reviewed so far are great pieces and we are looking forward to watching the rest.

In the mean time there are a few ways you can help the fest.

Join our thunderclap campaign. 

Thunderclap is a way to amplify our message about the festival.  It sets up a scheduled tweet or facebook post from each of our supporters. The message is scheduled to go out on Aug 4th at 1pm.  We need to get at least 100 people to sign up. Currently we have 80 supporters on thunderclap. With those 80 supporters, over 600,000 other people will read about the new urbanism film festival.  When you sign up to support us, all you are doing is giving thunderclap to post to your account, the post will read “City Stories take to the Silver Screen at the #NewUrbanism Film Festival! Support the fest! Buy Tickets! #nuff2015″  Imagine all 100 people tweeting that at once, that is what thunderclap does.
Buy a ticket to the Group Hike Fundraiser with the Founder of Hikespeak.com.

We’re hosting a group hike with Seth Smigelski, founder of Hikespeak.com and hiking writer for Huffington Post, Examiner.com, and Weekend Sherpa.  Hikespeak.com is an interactive database of hikes around the world, but mostly in Los Angeles.  You can search for a hike by difficulty level, length, distance from your house, or by things you want to see or do on the hike (e.g. hikes with bridges, hikes with waterfalls, hikes with ruins, etc.) The hike includes a picnic lunch from Twist Eatery LA at the Old LA Zoo.  Meet at the Griffith Park Carousel, we’ll hike to Beacon Hill and to Bee Rock, then down to the Old Zoo for Lunch.

Register for the Urbanism Filmmaking Challenge.

We are registering folks now for the urbanism filmmaking challenge.  This event pairs Urbanists with Filmmakers in an effort to make a short documentary (2-5 minutes) during the week prior to the festival.  Prizes include $300 cash and gift certificates to local fest sponsors.  Urbanists, register yourself as an expert on a local project or development.  You’ll give a short presentation with photos and documents to all of the filmmakers in the audience. Afterward the filmmakers will find you to seek out working with you on making a short doc about the project.  Filmmakers, you watch urbanists present on various aspects of urbanism happening in L.A. Afterward you’ll get to choose who you want to work with to their project to the big screen.

Special Screening in Austin Tx.

If you live in the central Texas region, you may want to join us for a special screening of last year’s winners!  August 31st at the Alamo Brewhouse Cinema in South Lamar. The event is hosted by the Central Texas Chapter of the Congress for the New Urbanism.