The 48 Hour Film Project is a contest in which teams of filmmakers are assigned a genre, a character, a prop, and a line of dialogue, and have 48 hours to create a short film containing those elements. Shortly after the 48 hours of filmmaking, the films from each city are then screened at a theater in that city.[1] The Project was inspired by The 24 Hour Plays.[1] It has existed since 2001.[1] It was created by Mark Ruppert and is produced by Ruppert and Liz Langston.[1] In 2009, nearly 40,000 filmmakers made around 3000 films in 76 cities worldwide.[1]
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Years cities participated are in parentheses.
The competition organizers maintain records online that indicate which cities have participated in past years.[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12]
In each participating city, one participant is chosen as the City Winner and their film is submitted to a jury for consideration against other City Winners for the competition year. The jury's selection from among these films is named the year's winner and is honored at Filmapalooza, the finale festival for the 48 Hour Film Project.[13]
In 2003, the creators of the 48 Hour Film Project created the National Film Challenge, which is an annual three-day film competition with roughly the same structure as the 48 Hour Film Project, except that the films are mailed in when completed and then screened on-line, rather than being shown in movie theater in the local city.[14] In 2008, this competition was opened to filmmakers from around the world and although the name was not officially changed, the runner-up hailed from Utrecht, Netherlands.[14] The founders and organizers say that the NFC offers a time-based filmmaking competition to participants around the world, including those who are not close to a 48 Hour Film Project participating city.
In 2006, the producers of the National Film Challenge began the International Documentary Challenge (also known as the Doc Challenge) in which participating filmmakers produce a documentary in five days. [15]
The organizers of the Auckland competition split off from the 48 Hour Film Project after the 2003 competition and formed 48HOURS, which is now a wholly separate organization that runs a similar competition in New Zealand.