to engage with their world. While the mainstream media fosters passivity, our media instills hope and provokes an activist response.

Our goal is to utilize cutting-edge animation combined with interviews and music to create educational episodes that introduce new ideas and possibilities. Our first episode presents a dynamic visual statement, using the ideas of the counter-culture journalist and visionary Daniel Pinchbeck, on indigenous cultures, sustainability, and the nature of time. In future episodes, we intend to focus on visionaries and scientists like mycologist Paul Stamets, quantum physicist Amit Goswami, and biologist Bruce Lipton, as well as other systems thinkers and ecological designers. We believe that packaging these ideas in a style that relates to contemporary video games and hip-hop is the only way to bring them to a huge audience of young people. We have dubbed our prototype episode, “Toward 2012”, in Mandarin Chinese and Portugese, pointing toward our global ambitions for the project.

“PostModern Times” will utilize the viral power of the Internet to disseminate free “information snacks” that can also be seen on cell phones, I-Pods, and I-Phones. Eventually, these short pieces will be remixed into a long-form feature, following the success of documentaries such as “The Inconvenient Truth”, “The 11th Hour”, “What the Bleep Do We Know”, and “The Secret”. “PostModern Times” will present a new-paradigm vision of a sustainable future, including concepts such as relocalization, local currencies, alternative energies, natural bioremediation, along with the notion of a psychic transformation. The grant from BFI will help fund the next episodes and allow us to develop our Internet presence, creating a virtual community based around a positive eco-evolutionary paradigm.

Comprehensive: “PostModern Times” will empower the viewer with new and necessary knowledge to aid the process of social and ecological transformation. This is done by presenting content on these subjects, but also by providing links to websites and publications on similar and related subjects, as well as discussion groups, already in place on our website and on youtube.

Our initial prototype, “Toward 2012”, was the number one pick in YouTube’s “Film and Animation” category, has been selected for CurrentTV and international festivals, and received over 40,000 views in its first two months with no marketing budget. We plan on releasing a series of short animations, “information snacks,” that will spread important ideas while building the audience for our feature release. Our fast-moving imagery and graphical style is targeted at the MTV and video game generation. A content-rich website will help to establish “PostModern Times” as a trusted brand for the new culture of consciousness, featuring resources on our topics, an attention to design, and a store for branded merchandise that relates to our themes.

Anticipatory: These days, people are bombarded with waves of distracting media and “infotainment” that lacks deeper meaning. While most young people will not sit down and read a challenging book like “Synergetics”, they are highly receptive to visual media that is fast-paced and entertaining. By breaking down complex ideas into “information snacks” that challenge preconceptions and offer a new paradigm, “PostModern Times” will inspire people to think, to ask questions, and ultimately to change their world. Utilizing the Internet, we will encourage people to go deeper and take transformative steps – the website could become an “information clearinghouse” for the types of projects featured at BFI and on the website, WorldChanging.

Ecologically Responsible: We will inspire people to become the change they would like to see in the world. “PostModern Times” will accomplish this, not only by pointing out what is wrong in our system/culture, but also by showing different techniques in permaculture, alternative energy, design science, alternative heath, and so on, that can be used and applied by individuals and communities, right now, to change the world.

Verifiable: As an initial validation to our process of education and sharing of information, we have the success of “PostModern Times – Toward 2012” on youtube. “Toward 2012” used animation and documentary film techniques to create an “information snack” based on the work of Daniel Pinchbeck. Future episodes will feature the work and thought of people like: Bruce Lipton, Amit Goswami Jeremy Narby, Deepak Chopra, Fritjof Capra, Morris Berman, Ray Kurzweil, Marilyn Schlitz, Wade Davis, William McDonough, Lynne Twist, StarHawk, Buckminster Fuller, William Irwin Thompson, Nikola Tesla, Sri Aurobindo, Rudolf Steiner, Carl Jung, and so on.

Toward 2012 had 15,000 hits in its first two weeks on YouTube, and over 40,000 hits in 7 weeks.

Replicable: We are open to collaborating with other groups and organizations working toward sustainability. Our film making process combining animation with interviews and life-action in a dense “info-snack” can be effectively applied for the production of any type of educational video for kids and adults.

Achievable: Because our final output is the web, and cell phones, the production costs are considerably lower then producing fro higher definition. Our Pilot: “Toward 2012” had a two months production time all together, and took 8 professionals only to accomplish an incredible amount of work.

The problem we are addressing, and seeking to solve, is the critical one of getting important information out to young generations who have been reared on fast-paced media that is designed to make them passive consumers and cynics who do not believe that personal and global change is possible. How do we utilize the tools of mainstream media to create a new media paradigm that promotes learning, self-actualization, and activism? We feel that this project is financially viable, and when we attract revenue streams through sponsorship or feature distribution, we will return a proportion of our revenue to non-profit ecological concerns.

Director Joao Amorim has a background in animation and CGI. He is currently represented by curious Pictures. Joao has worked as a designer, animator, and Animation Supervisor for many years prior to directing. He was the Head of Animation on "Chicago 10", Brett Morgen's new film, which opened Sundance this year. He has also directed commercials for BMW, Panasonic, Oceana, among others. Amorim also directed many short films such as "Ferrets for Freedom", (a satirical short on Rudy Giuliani, and a current hit on YouTube with over 100.000 viewers), and the award winning "Don't get Charged up", (on the recycling of Batteries), among others.

Producer Nikos Katsaounis is an Emmy award winning documentary filmmaker, producer, and video artist who works and lives in New York City. Having studied anthropology, philosophy, and filmmaking, he pursues a diverse yet consistent subject matter. Documenting indigenous peoples and highlighting non-western world-views, his interests attempt to articulate the vast contrast of cultures that exist in the world today, while also hoping to illuminate the blind spots of the west by bridging the gaps through experiential art. He has produced and directed numerous short docs, viral videos, and animations, his latest feature length documentary Entheogen: Awakening the Divine within is touring the film festival circuit.

Editor Fellipe Gamarano Barbosa was born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 1980. He completed his M.F.A. in film at Columbia University in 2006. His short film La Muerte Es Pequeña was an official selection of the 2006 Sundance Film Festival and a Student Academy Award regional finalist. His thesis film, Salt Kiss, was entirely financed by the James Bridges Development Award for his work with actors. The Brazilian short had its US premiere at the 44th New York Film Festival and it played in festivals such as Sundance and Clermont-Ferrand, and won awards in Aspen, Guadalajara, Portugal, Rio and Recife. Salt Kiss is available for download on itunes.

Writer and Interviewer Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of “Breaking Open the Head” (Broadway Books, 2002) and the bestselling “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl” (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006). Pinchbeck is the editorial directory of Reality Sandwich (www.realitysandwich.com). He writes a column, “Prophet Motive”, for Conscious Enlightment publishing (www.cemagazines.com), which appears in Conscious Choice (Chicago), Conscious Choice (Seattle), Whole Life Times (LA), and Common Ground (SF). He is co creator of the animation project, PostModern Times (postmoderntimes.com).

The objective of our project is to utilize the power of contemporary media as a tool for transforming consciousness and instituting global social change. “PostModern Times” will follow Buckminster Fuller’s model, inspiring people to think about the whole, not just the parts. As Fuller put it: "You can't better the world by simply talking to it. Philosophy to be effective must be mechanically applied."

Please take a look at www.postmoderntimes.com We can also send you a Press Kit, if you provide us with an address. It can also be sent digitally. We would also like to provide you with a DVD of some of our other socially oriented films.