Pepsi and MOFILM today announced the launch of the “60 seconds to Refresh Your World” Pepsi Short Film Competition… calling on aspiring movie makers from across the world to use their creativity, imagination and flair to create an original one minute film.  The winning film-maker will get the chance to work alongside the Academy Award winning producer of Titanic and Avatar, Jon Landau, on a specially commissioned Pepsi film.

The brief for the “60 seconds to Refresh Your World” global competition, which is aimed at championing the passion and creativity of youth, encourages would-be film makers to be as thought provoking, original and inventive as they like, just as long as their films bring to life one of the following themes:

• If Youth Ran The World…
• All You Can Do With 1 Euro, 1 Dollar or 1 Pound
• Paint Your World
• Tomorrow
• Here’s To The Crazy Ones.

The winning entrant from each of the above themes will win a trip to Barcelona for two, with $2500 cash to spend. Here, they will meet the Pepsi MOFILM Jury at the Global GSM congress before one of the five will be recognized as the overall winner. The congress held on February 15^th sees the world’s top mobile industry leaders come together in one city to collaborate ideas, conduct business and exhibit cutting-edge products and technology that will define the mobile future.

The budding young film maker will take home $10,000 spending money and a $20,000 production budget to co-produce a Pepsi commercial film alongside Jon Landau.

Jon Landau discussed his involvement with the Pepsi MOFILM Competition  saying:

“I’m really excited to have the chance to work with up and coming film making talent. The creative platforms in the brief are geared to inspire thought provoking scripts and film is one of the most expressive mediums for anyone to communicate their vision of the world.”

The Short Film Competition runs from now to until February and will culminate at a special awards ceremony in Spain. The Pepsi judges will rate the films according to their originality and how well the message is communicated.  Five Silver and five Bronze runners up will also be chosen, each receiving a Flip Mino HD camera.

Pepsi’s partnership with MOFILM is representative of the brand’s new ‘Refresh Your World’ theme set to be launched next year, which is based on enabling youth to create positive change and giving them a big stage on which to shine.

Thomas Moradpour, International Pepsi Marketing Director, commented on the competition :

“2010 is an exciting new decade for Pepsi. We are really excited about encouraging and celebrating the most creative young people from around the world, and the Refresh Your World film competition does exactly that. We’re hoping to help bring scale to their ideas and to enable them to reach a much broader audience. This competition is a once in a lifetime opportunity for any budding young filmmaker to gain exposure and skills by working with Jon Landau who will share his advice, guidance and wealth of experience.”

The Short Film Competition is the next step in the Pepsi’s partnership with MOFILM since its involvement in the “Make An Ad” competition earlier this year.

For more information on the competition and how to enter visit http://www.mofilm.com/competitions/pepsi2010/

For more information contact:

Ralph Cochrane at MOFILM  Ralph.cochrane@mofilm.com + 44 7940 123 455

or Will Cookson at Freud Communications will.cookson@freud.com + 44 203 003 6397

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Notes to editors:

PepsiCo:

PepsiCo is one of the world’s largest food and beverage companies, with 2008 annual revenues of more than $43 billion. The company employs approximately 198,000 people worldwide, and its products are sold in approximately 200 countries. Its principal businesses include: Frito-Lay snacks, Pepsi-Cola beverages, Gatorade sports drinks, Tropicana juices and Quaker foods.

The PepsiCo portfolio includes 18 brands that generate $1 billion or more each in annual retail sales. PepsiCo’s commitment to sustainable growth, defined as Performance with Purpose, is focused on generating healthy financial returns while giving back to communities the company serves. This includes meeting consumer needs for a spectrum of convenient foods and beverages, reducing the company’s impact on the environment through water, energy and packaging initiatives, and supporting its employees through a diverse and inclusive culture that recruits and retains world-class talent.

PepsiCo is listed on the Dow Jones Sustainability North America Index and the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index.   For more information, please visit www.pepsico.com.

MOFILM:

MOFILM has a global community of filmmakers spanning over one hundred countries and is a pioneer in video competitions for major brands and creating tailor made content. MOFILM also works through its Labs program to promote creative talent and filmmakers with leading film festivals and universities.

For the latest information about MOFILM please visit www.mofilm.com.

I had the rare opportunity to witness Martin Scorcese being interviewed on stage at the BFI (British Film Institute) in London tonight, nearly eleven years since his last outing at an intimate event to celebrate archive film. Martin doesn’t give many interviews and comments on his passion and inspiration even less, but tonight was different. Tonight we were all supporting the extraordinary work that the BFI team do on restoring classic film. Film that is often destroyed almost beyond repair, hazy from mould or chemical leakage and which is painstakingly put back together.

I have a confession. For me, a seventies child, black and white film represents something of a barrier. I’d just rather watch colour or more likely iPlayer (TV in the UK on line) or Youtube. I’ve seem some classics, but I felt slightly over-awed in the room as people remembered the exact year of an Alfred Hitchcock silent movie. Did you know he made ten silent movies, one of which is sadly lost due to the passage of time and poor stewardship? For that the BFI should be applauded, there is an amazing team which opened my eyes to the technique and beauty of older films. What was interesting was the inspiration of many of the classic scenes in Taxi Driver or Good Fellas actually come from films Scorcese watched earlier in his life. Not only that, they were British films. In fact the great man himself said “Why do British people feel the need to defend British Films? You don’t need to”.

As perhaps the solitary geek in the audience, I was fascinated by the technical detail and analysis of ‘tricks of the trade’ that Scorcese pointed out as well as his observation of the “human condition”, both of which were timeless. He also loved ‘Sexy Beast” and Ray Winstone. I’m not one to argue on that. I was genuinely captivated by his love of the art of cinema and the stories of famous scenes in his films that go back to much earlier art, much of it from the UK. He’s also a man of action not just words. Outside, we found displays of memorabilia, some of it bought for the BFI by Mr Scorcese like the red shoes from ‘Red Shoes’. In the audience, just in front of me, sat Terry Gilliam and Paul Gambaccini, but in a way the pianist who accompanied a rare clip of archive film stole the show. I came away thinking “so that’s what life was like in the 1930′s”. Sadly TV just doesn’t cover that era and against my better judgement, it fascinated me.

I asked Mr Scorcese a question at the end, after he’d been pigeon holed as ‘film noir’ – “If there is one archive film that inspires Scorcese to do something different, something that we don’t expect, what would it be?”. It turns out, that despite five or more ‘street flicks’ like the Departed, Martin would like to make a kids movie, inspired in part by his ten year old daughter. He thought Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox, which opened the London Film Festival was delightful so watch out for a Roald Dahl sequel maybe? For now though, his next film is based on the brilliant book ‘Shutter Island‘ and is out in March 2010.

Outside I introduced the concept of MOFILM and our work with aspiring filmmakers. We got his card and Gilliam’s agent’s details. Strangely I was more impressed by that than many stars we met in the course of MOFILM so far. Maybe the geek in me appreciated the enormous attention to detail and talent that film directors need to succeed. Watch this space….

For more on the BFI’s work with archive film visit: http://www.bfi.org.uk/nftva/