Hey Filmmakers, want to win a $100k and some serious klout? GE and CINELAN held a press conference today in Park City to announce the launch of a documentary short contest open to anyone with a message. The FOCUS FORWARD Filmmaker Challenge will award $200,000 in cash prizes to the top five entries in the professionally juried Challenge (www.focusforwardfilms.com/challenge), with $100,000 going to the Grand Prize Winner. Definitely not chump change.

The Filmmaker Challenge grew out of the FOCUS FORWARD – Short Films, Big Ideas program (www.focusforwardfilms.com), a series of 30, three-minute nonfiction films developed by leading documentary filmmakers. The theme is the power of ideas and invention. Those films will screen at film festivals globally, followed by Vimeo.com debuts. I bet you already have a few ideas for your own film. Think compelling nightly news packages. That’s a three-minute film.

You’ll need to make an end-to-end story about people or organizations whose innovative efforts in medicine, computer science, robotics, engineering, green energy, or other fields of applied technical knowledge have had a significant positive impact on humanity. It could even be technology in the sports field. The Challenge films will sit alongside the first 30 films produced by FOCUS FORWARD filmmakers on Vimeo. Submissions open in mid April, with winners to be announced at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival. For more information, please visit www.focusforwardfilms.com/challenge.

Jack Myers, project producer, said at the conference. “The concept is to build a traveling nonfiction film series; we will be inviting filmmakers from every corner of the earth to join us in creating short films about game-changing innovation.”