Short Film News

Tags

africa in motion, birds eye view, films, gff, gsff

Some days, I have the day to myself and find myself with nothing to write about. I trawl the internet, news websites, blogs, twitter feeds, film sites and there’s nothing, zip, nada that inspires me to grab the keyboard and write something. Today is not one of those days. Today is a good day for short films.

News the first: As regular readers will know, the Glasgow Short Film Festival took place last weekend, and concluded with the announcement of the winner of the inaugural Best International Short Film Award. For those, like myself, who didn’t make it along, the winner was Peter in Radioland a documentary by Johanna Wagner. The Glasgow Film Festival itself concludes this weekend and there looks to be some interesting Middle Eastern cinema showing over the next couple of days. One of my favourite things about this festival is that there are often two screenings of the films being shown making it possible to recommend a good film to a friend and have them be able to see it, however the only film I managed to see was the cold war thriller, L’Affaire Farewell which although rather engaging, was already on its second showing.

News the second: With all the recent fuss about Tim Burton’s new version of Alice in Wonderland it’s all too easy to forget that this is far from the first adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s best known work. That was made back in 1903, just 37 years after the book was published. The film was directed by Cecil Hepworth and Percy Stow, with music composed and performed by Wendy Hiscocks. At twelve minutes long it was the longest film made in Britain up to that point (and is a lovely early example of tinting to portray mood) however, due to extensive damage to the only remaining print, even after extensive restoration by the BFI it now only runs for just over nine minutes. The BFI have made it available to view for free online and more information on the restoration can be found here.

News the third: Not technically short film news, but related to the short film Pumzi that I wrote about a few weeks ago. Pumzi director, Wanuri Kahiu‘s feature film From a Whisper (2008), about the aftermath of the Nairobi bombings in 1998, is screening at the ICA in London on the 10th and 11th of March, as part of the Birds Eye View Festival. The screening will include a Q&A session with the director.

News the fourth: More of a signal boost this one, the Africa in Motion: Edinburgh African Film Festival has issued a call for entries for its short film competition. They’re looking for young African filmmakers, those who haven’t completed a feature previously, to submit short films up to 30mins long. Submission guidelines and entrance forms can be found here. The closing date is May 31st 2010 with the short list being announced at the end of August.

Film Festivals I Have Missed

Tags

africa in motion, birds eye view, eiff, films, gff

Film festivals are excellent things, brilliant opportunities to see films that you might not otherwise – or at least not for a long time – to see short films or obscure documentaries. I love film festivals, but crucially I don’t go to that many. Not, as some might presume, because there aren’t very many in Scotland, while the majority of the film festivals that take place in the UK are held in London there are a fair few up here. Recently the Edinburgh Film Festival has stepped out from under the shadow of its parent Festival, and the Glasgow and Shetland film festivals are gaining increasing international coverage; there are numerous smaller more specialised – Edinburgh’s annual Africa in Motion comes to mind – film festivals held in Glasgow and Edinburgh, festivals from the rest of the UK increasingly do tours and Tilda Swinton and co continue to produce charmingly eccentric efforts across the Highlands.  I just have this unfortunate tendency to miss them. Somehow, I’m always in the wrong place at the wrong time or don’t hear about them until it’s too late; one year I will hear that tickets for the Edinburgh film festival have gone on sale before the films I want to see sell out.

Never has this unfortunate tendency of mine been more obvious than this autumn. I knew in advance I would be missing the Africa in Motion festival as I was off adventuring around mainland Europe, and doubly so because its tour doesn’t come my way this year. However, it seemed everywhere I went around Europe I would find a film-festival that I couldn’t go to. Festivals seemed to be happening the week before I arrived places, or the week after I left them, in the case of the controversy dogged Zürich film festival it started the evening of the day I left. In one particularly annoying case I discovered that the last screening of one festival was the evening I arrived in that city; the day afterwards. It did occur to me that it would make quite a fun project to travel around Europe for a year trying to attend every single film festival, but mostly I came to feel that the film festivals of Europe were taunting me a little. It even continued once I’d returned to the UK, arriving in Bristol to discover that the Unchosen festival – which campaigns against Human Trafficking – was the following month. (Looking for a link to that festival I’ve discovered that I am currently missing the Encounters short film festival in Bristol…)

Therefore I felt thoroughly triumphant to actually make it to a screening as part of the Birds Eye View Festival when its tour arrived in Glasgow this week. Flooding and train cancellations meant I didn’t get to the Documentary Masterclass at the CCA but I did see an excellent silent film with live musical accompaniment at the GFT on Wednesday. My Best Girl starring the iconic Mary Pickford could almost be held up as the perfect archetypal romantic comedy, and despite not being the greatest fan of the genre I mean that as a compliment. Additionally it has a certain charm, a sort of innocence and naivety almost, borne of being made in a less cynical age than our own. I must admit that I think all silent movies should be watched on a big screen with live musical accompaniment, there’s a certain vibrancy that the live accompaniment gives them that doesn’t come across on the pre-recorded scores that accompany DVD or television screenings. Some films lend themselves to cinematic viewing, loosing a certain something on the small screen (I saw Requiem for a Dream in a tiny screening room, with an excellent sound system, at uni and I’ve never felt more claustrophobic or enjoyed that film more). There’s just something about that piano accompaniment, accentuating the moments of comedy or tenderness, or picking up the pace, galloping along as the inevitable chase gets increasingly manic, that somehow manages to hold its own against any amount of deafeningly crystal clear 5.1 surround sound. There’s something more intimate and warm about it, almost akin to attending a gig, knowing that you’re sharing a unique experience and that even if you were to go and see the film again, with the same people, in the same place with the same accompanist it wouldn’t be exactly the same. It was, as the girl in the row behind me announced at the end, “exactly what I needed.”