Canon Video Grant seeks the best emerging talent worldwide in documentary filmmaking

Are you a videographer or photojournalist who wishes to cover a social, economic, political or cultural subject in a photojournalistic manner? The Canon Video Grant – Short Film Documentary could help you tell your story.
Canon Ambassador Lieve Blancquaert being filmed on a crowded riverbank with Canon video kit.

The Canon Video Grant – Short Film Documentary offers the recipient €8,000 and a loan of video kit to produce a documentary project. © Lieve Blancquaert

Applications are now open for the Canon Video Grant – Short Film Documentary, an annual award recognising the best emerging image-making talent worldwide, sponsored by Canon in association with Images Evidence.

Responding to an ever-changing media landscape in which video is becoming an increasingly essential tool for photographers, Canon launched the Grant in 2020. "This grant aims to celebrate and support up-and-coming champions of this new age of visual storytelling by giving them funding and a platform to be heard," says Richard Shepherd, Senior Product Marketing Manager, Canon EMEA.

"Canon is also arming storytellers with the innovation they need to further propel their careers in video. Just as the stills and video capabilities of the Canon EOS 5D Mark II marked the beginning of a shift in the market that enabled visual storytellers to move between stills and motion, the Canon EOS R5 with 8K video takes this a step further."

Juan Vicente Manrique Gomex was the recipient of the fourth Canon Video Grant for his short-film documentary project 'Looking for a donkey', which will be shot in Venezuela. With a bold satirical view, Juran will tell the story of two firefighters from a little town in the Venezuelan Andes, who were arrested and subsequently jailed after releasing a video in which they caricatured Venezuela's president Nicolas Maduro.

The prize

The grant winner will receive €8,000, along with a loan of video kit including a Canon video camera and two cine lenses to make a short documentary of approximately eight minutes in length.

The judging process

The recipient of the grant will be selected by a jury of industry experts in summer 2022. They will be chosen based on the strength of their previous work, as well as the presentation of their documentary proposal and the journalistic merit of its theme.

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Applicant criteria

The Canon Video Grant is open to individual professional photojournalists or documentary video makers with at least one video reportage project under their belt. They can be based anywhere in the world but need to have a proficient grasp of French or English, spoken and written. Their proposed short documentary must cover a social, economic, political or cultural subject in a journalistic manner.

Entry is free and open from 25 March 2024. The closing date is 27 May 2024.

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Supporting industry talent

Canon has been a sponsor of the Visa pour l'Image photojournalism festival for more than three decades. The Canon Video Grant continues Canon's long history of supporting industry talent at the festival. Established in the year 2000, the Canon Female Photojournalist Award recognises outstanding female photographers with an €8,000 project grant.

This year's Visa Pour l'Image festival will also see the return of the Canon Student Development Programme, which brings together young people from different countries for workshops, portfolios and mentoring.

To find out more about the Canon Video Grant – Short Film Documentary and to apply, visit the Visa pour l'Image Awards & Grants page or email canon-videogrant@orange.fr. Entry is free and the deadline is 27 May 2024.

Find out more about what's happening at Visa pour l'Image on our Visa pour l'Image event page.

Rachel Segal Hamilton

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