Zeitgeist: Harnessing The Storms Of Change
Join us at Prime Produce in Hell’s Kitchen for an interactive workshop where we’ll take the pulse of the CFF zeitgeist from festival conversations with audiences and filmmakers and the films we’ve shared. Explore strategies for crafting rich climate narratives for the screen. Identify: burning questions that can motivate a climate story. Learn: research methods and narrative strategies that reflect the complexity of our climate-changed world. We’ll examine the role stories play in fostering empathy, shifting perceptions, and inspiring audiences in meaningful dialogue to drive civic engagement. Please bring a notebook and a pen–we’ll have writing prompts to get your imagination going and to spark discussion around the future we want to create.
Co-Founders & Facilitators:
ABBY RABINOWITZ: STEM expert and climate journalist, and Director of the writing program at NYU Tandon School of Engineering. Abby’s courses include an advanced seminar "Climate Fiction and the City." Abby has written on climate change policy, technology, and narratives for outlets including Wired, The Columbia Journalism Review, Grist and The New Republic, The New York Times, The Guardian.
JESSIE KEYT: Writer, film scholar, and consultant for creatives and production companies in the US, UK, Europe, Brazil, South Africa, and India. She co-authored Alternative Scriptwriting: Contemporary Storytelling for the Screen, and is the Head of Screenwriting and an Associate Arts Professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, where she teaches a graduate-level master class on “Writing the Climate Change Script.”
LYDIA DEAN PILCHER: Filmmaker, cultural strategist, educator, and two-time Emmy winning, Oscar nominated producer of films and TV series. Pilcher has an extensive track record creating innovative cross industry, multi-stakeholder collaborations in entertainment, working with studios, unions, and guilds to drive narrative change. She designed and teaches an interdisciplinary course in the Columbia Climate School, Climatic Change: Storytelling Arts, Zeitgeist, and our Future. exploring compelling approaches to climate solutions in the stories we tell in film, television, theater, digital media, visual art, and creative writing.