36 Cinema Creative Fund

Forging new worlds through film, sound, and future tools.

RZA helped build the first chamber with Wu-Tang Clan—raw sound, sword-edge style, and street wisdom turned into myth. The Future Shaolin Fund opens the next chamber for rising creators who move with discipline, cut with style, and put soul in the machine. Created with 36 Cinema, we’re looking for films, visual albums, scored shorts, and audiovisual work with force, control, and a world of its own.

medium:film-storytelling

Eligibility

This Fund is for creators on the rise using moving image, sound, and future-facing tools to build work with authorship, precision, and impact. We’re looking for projects that treat technology like an instrument, not a shortcut—where AI, code, and experimentation sharpen the vision, deepen the craft, and still leave fingerprints on every frame.
To qualify for this fund, projects must meet the following eligibility requirements:
- Build with moving image: The project must be an original moving-image work, such as a short film, visual album, scored short, music-driven narrative, documentary, or other audiovisual project.
- Let the sound cut first: Music, score, or sonic design must be central to the project’s concept and execution, shaping its rhythm, tension, tone, or structure.
- Bring a real point of view: The work must show clear artistic authorship, strong aesthetic control, and a cohesive creative vision across image, sound, story, and atmosphere.
- Use future tools with intent: Creative use of AI, machine learning, generative media, interactive systems, custom workflows, or other emerging technologies is encouraged when it meaningfully advances the work.
- Keep the human hand on the blade: Applicants must clearly explain how any advanced tools are being used, and show that technology is serving the artist’s vision rather than replacing it.
- Show us invention, not gimmicks: Preference will be given to projects that push form, bend genre, prototype new methods, or find original ways to fuse cinematic storytelling with new technology.
- Lead your own chamber: Applicants must be emerging creators or small independent teams with a meaningful creative leadership role in the work.
- Have a path to finish: The project must be feasible, with a credible production plan, a realistic use of funds, and a clear path to completion and release.
- Control the rights: Applicants must hold, or have a credible path to securing, the rights needed to create, complete, and share the project.

Projects (31)

31 submitted

Project	Status	Raised
Sexilio	submitted	$16,476
Futuro Nativo	submitted	$233,879
FutureZoo	submitted	$215,046
Mango Magic Movement	submitted	$28,679
We're Loud Fest 2026	submitted	$47,579
Delivery	submitted	$0
International Artists Project	submitted	$462
FREERIDERS	submitted	$12,909
A New Musical Traumedy: BEHIND THE MASK	submitted	$19,558
One Novel, One Creative Agency	submitted	$0
MusicaW3	submitted	$52,007
Jump Scare City	submitted	$70
Dark Rooms – Immersive Experience	submitted	$0
TukTuk	submitted	$5,563
Fuego Mi Espíritu	submitted	$25,741
Prosaic - Future Proof Cinema	submitted	$0
Swahili Futurism Residency	submitted	$25,974
Gypsy Blood - Movie	submitted	$624
CHAINWARS .wtf || Cypherpunk Space-Opera	submitted	$15,713
HELP US BUILD A VIDEO STORE ERA ART EXHIBITION	submitted	$0
Tune In Show	submitted	$269,534
Hip-Hop Africa: Building Pan-African Hip-Hop Infrastructure	submitted	$111,237
THE SYSTEM	submitted	$5,474
UNI - Universal Language	submitted	$0
Every Other Breath - Animating the Marine Carbon Cycle	submitted	$5,254
What Becomes Possible	submitted	$20
ISOLDE	submitted	$4,336
Learning Without Permission - Ep03 - The Network Society Series	submitted	$0
THE NAYDO LANGUAGE	submitted	$1,875
Decent Jukebox	submitted	$1,161
Crystal Sovereigns	submitted	$3,381