Now in its 12th year, CREATE: Moving Pictures Festival is one of three streams — CREATE, GROW, and SERVE — at the upcoming Mission Central Conference*, the largest annual Christian missions and discipleship conference in North America. The conference gathers 10-15 thousand attendees yearly for a weekend of training, conversation, and worship.
At CREATE: Moving Pictures Festival, our mission is to present and to inspire well-told stories that draw us toward a creative God and into God’s redemptive work in the world.
As part of a larger conference, CREATE has the opportunity to present motion pictures to a diverse audience and to awaken imaginations to the power and importance of art and story. With our selections, we aim to exemplify faith, explore truth and beauty, challenge assumptions, and motivate loving response.
We also aim to support and be a catalyst for a community of generative Christians. CREATE desires to move beyond passive consumption; we are keen to inspire Christians (artists or not) to live lives of holy creativity.
Toward these aims, the festival includes development opportunities such as Q&A’s on selected films, workshops, and networking experiences.
Additionally, the three streams of the conference — CREATE, GROW, and SERVE — flow into one another in formal and informal ways, which allows participants in each stream to engage with each other and with a wide spectrum of work and passion.
CREATE is also open to and attended by local cinema lovers who are not part of the conference! We welcome all audience members, regardless of background, affiliation, or beliefs.
CREATE is open for submissions of Feature length or Short works, as well as Television/Web Series episodes, or Mixed-Media. We accept Scripted as well as Documentary, and welcome submissions in ALL GENRES and all subject matters. A committee reviews all submissions and will extend invitations to producers whose work has been selected. Some sessions may have multiple works screened back-to-back — these groupings are often determined thematically and are decided by the organizing committee.
*The annual conference, first convened in 1984, has been historically known as Missions Fest, or Missions Fest Vancouver. The film festival was previously called Missions Fest Vancouver Film Festival.