This grant provides three additional years of support to Barnard College to continue the partnership with Athena Film Festival to develop and celebrate films by and about women that focus on STEM themes and characters. Grant funds will support an annual showcase screening at the Athena Film Festival, followed by a panel discussion with scientists and filmmakers; four annual fellowships to support screenwriters with STEM-focused scripts who attend a lab and receive six months of mentorship; and a $20,000 annual Development Grant that goes to an Athena List finalist or winner with a STEM-themed script and which includes a public reading of the winning script that takes place during the festival.

This grant provides three years of renewed support to the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) for a series of activities, programs, and initiatives designed to encourage UCLA film students to engage with scientific and technological themes in their filmmaking and to produce science-themed films and screenplays. UCLA will award three annual prizes: a $30,000 production award and two $15,000 screenwriting awards for feature films or episodic television. UCLA will also host an annual colloquium that brings film students together with leading researchers to discuss the newest developments in science and technology. This grant also provides funds for dedicated scientific advisors to help students with their projects, independent judges to evaluate student submission, and faculty support and other operational and promotional costs associated with administration of the program.

This grant provides three additional years of support to continue the partnership with Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama (CMU) to award prizes to student screenwriters who write science or technology themed scripts. The CMU program includes a year-long screenwriting workshop that meets weekly and focuses on the challenges and opportunities posed by incorporating science into dramatic or comedic narratives; a mentorship program that pairs film students with working scientists to help them depict science accurately in their work; a guest speaker series by accomplished screenwriters and television writers; an annual screenwriting competition that awards $45,000 total per year to three to four of the best science-themed scripts submitted; and yearly showcases in Los Angeles and New York to bring student filmmakers into contact with leading producers, directors, and distributors in the film and television industry.

This grant supports an annual $150,000 First Feature Production Award at New York University Tisch School of the Arts (NYU) to provide students the opportunity to produce and release their first full-length feature film that dramatizes scientific and technological themes or characters. Students submit one-page pitches for science films annually. A dozen quarter finalists are selected to write step-by-step breakdowns of their films, and from this group, six semi-finalists are chosen to meet with scientists and film faculty to improve the science content, narrative, and design of their films, before submitting revised treatments. In the finalist stage, three students are selected and awarded $5,000 each to develop their treatments into full-scale feature screenplays. Finally, one winner is selected and receives a $150,000 production award to produce their first feature film.

This grant supports Film Independent (FIND) to host the 2025 Sloan Film Summit, a convening of all Alfred P. Sloan Foundation film and media-related grantees held every three years, from film schools to film festivals and from film development and film distribution partners to theater, gaming, and social media partners. At the summit, FIND will highlight 25 years of the Sloan Foundation’s film program, looking back at where the program started and what has changed in the science and film landscape, as well as the media and broader culture. In addition to anticipated attendance by 200 members of the Sloan film community—including all the winning screenwriters, filmmakers, episodic writers, gamers, and animators from the past three years—FIND will invite members of the general public to participate in several public-facing events, adding an estimated 1000 attendees.  Funded activities include introductions and updates from Sloan award recipients; case studies of successful collaborations between filmmakers and scientists; networking opportunities that connect filmmakers with scientists, agents, casting directors, distributors, film festivals, production companies, entrepreneurs, and executives; live reading of excerpts from Sloan-winning screenplays; panels that will feature scientists expounding on underappreciated scientific stories and discoveries, and keynote addresses.

This grant provides three years of continuing support for a program at the University of Southern California (USC) School of Cinematic Arts to award production, screenwriting, and animation awards to student filmmakers who explore scientific and technological themes and characters. USC will make two production awards, two screenwriting awards, and one animation award annually to student filmmakers each year for a total of 15 awards over three years. The screenwriting award is offered to exceptional feature-length or episodic television scripts that accurately depict scientific stories or themes. The production award provides funds to produce a short film that centers science and technology themes or characters. The animation award supports the development and production of animated short films with science and technology themes. Grant funding also includes support for annual “Sloan Evenings,” which involve screenings of completed student Sloan films followed by discussions with scientists and filmmakers, and annual science seminars, which brings in scientists to talk to students about recent scientific studies, findings, controversies, discoveries, and other events that may inform and inspire filmmakers to further explore science as a theme in their filmmaking.

This grant is for three years of continued support for the American Film Institute (AFI) to continue awarding screenwriting, production, development, and scholarship awards for science and technology films and episodic television, and to hold science and technology seminars. The screenwriting award is offered to exceptional feature-length or episodic television scripts that accurately depict scientific stories or themes. The production award provides funds to produce a short film that centers science and technology themes or characters. The tuition award is for a prospective student with a science background who is transitioning to a film career. The development award provides financial support and mentorship for graduating Fellows developing science-based projects for the commercial film market, with the intent of pitching, optioning, and/or selling a scripted feature or series. AFI will also continue to host annual Sloan Seminars featuring screenings of films followed by discussions with accomplished filmmakers and scientists about the science and technology themes in the films.