The Cary Comes Home Festival, in partnership with The Video Essay Podcast

Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Cary Grant’s journey to the United States and international stardom, his hometown’s festival is seeking video essays exploring journeys of many types.

This year marks the centenary of Archie Leach’s first transatlantic voyage, the beginning of his incredible journey to becoming Cary Grant. Born in Bristol, UK in 1904 as Archibald Leach, Archie ran away from school with a troupe of acrobats and later sailed to America on the RMS Olympic on 21 July 1920 on, arriving in New York on 28 July. Archie lived in New York for over 10 years developing his craft, first in vaudeville, then in a music hall on the Broadway stage, before setting off in a yellow open-top Packard in November 1931 for Hollywood, where he changed his name and the rest is history. Journeys also feature in many of his films, from the 2000-mile chase of North by Northwest to the cruise ship romance in An Affair to Remember.

We are interested in exploring the idea of the journey, not only in terms of geography, place, space and physical travels (both real life and on film), but also in terms of psychological journeys: voyages of identity, self-discovery and self-invention.  

We are open to all kinds of journeys, including fan journeys, star pilgrimage, set-jetting, movie location tours and rephotography and all forms of audio-visual criticism, including video essays, fanvids, and any kind of video that reappropriates footage of Cary Grant.

Videos of any length will be accepted but the ideal length will be between 5-6 minutes.

All submitted work will be featured on the Cary Comes Home website (https://www.carycomeshome.co.uk/) and on The Video Essay Podcast website (thevideoessay.com). Some of the best work will be featured on an episode of The Video Essay Podcast which will be recorded live at the virtual festival in November. Creators will be invited to join the conversation.

Please add “For Study Purposes Only” at the end of the video, include a list of the sources of clips used, any references cited and ideally, if you want to use a backing track, please only use copyright-free music for that purpose. If you use copyrighted music, we may not be able to feature your work at the festival.

You will need to upload to your own Vimeo page. Learn more about uploading in their Video Guidelines, Compression Guidelines, and Help Center.

If you are new to making video essays you might want to check out the series of videographic exercises listeners were assigned as “homework” on The Video Essay Podcast, here: thevideoessay.com/exercises 

Rolling Deadline until: Friday 16 October 2020

We’ll begin to post submissions to the website from September.

Cary Comes Home is a biennial festival which aims to celebrate Cary Grant’s Bristol roots, develop new audiences for his work and recreate the golden age of cinema-going, directed by Dr Charlotte Crofts (Associate Professor of Filmmaking, UWE Bristol). The festival will take place online this year, 20-22 November 2020. Learn more at www.carycomeshome.co.uk 

The Video Essay Podcast, hosted by Will DiGravio, features interviews with critics, scholars, filmmakers, and other leading creators of videographic criticism. The show is accompanied by a weekly newsletter, ‘Notes on Videographic Criticism,’ which features original essays, interviews, and links to events and news related to the form. Learn more at www.thevideoessay.com.