Cambridge International Super 8 Film Festival - Free film festival from the 22nd of April 2010 to the 1st of May 2010 in Cambridge (UK).
In 2009, the third Cambridge International Super 8 Film Festival was hailed a resounding success with more than 88 short films shown in four days! More than 20 filmmakers from all around the world joined the festival for a great days of networking and film.
A sad day for British film - the New Producers Alliance, lynchpin of the UK independent film world over the past two decades, and long term friend and supporter of Netribution, has closed its doors. They ceased trading a week ago, blaming the recession and increased competition for training. Indeed it was the NPA's producer training that was responsible for me incorporating not only Netribution Ltd, but Spirit Level Cinema Ltd.
To get a grasp of why there were important, click to read Tom Fogg's interview with former NPA CEO David Castro (now at Screen South), Kevin Dolan (now at Film London) and Rachel Caplan (now running the San Francisco Green Film Fest) from 2000. Below is the full announcement from them:
"It is with great regret that the Executive Committee and Trustees announce that the New Producers Alliance ceased trading on the 8th March 2010. The recession and increased competition for training have contributed to a loss of membership income which, having taken professional advice, has left the directors of the two companies with no option but to close.
"The NPA has been a valued and respected resource for independent filmmakers since its inception in November 1992 and has provided help, advice and assistance to over 10,000 producers, directors and writers over the years. The NPA has attracted a membership of many energetic people, passionate about their projects, embodying the independent spirit. Some of these were members on their way to achieving great things. But there have been countless other great moments, such as learning a trick or two at a training event, meeting a new collaborator at NPA networking event or button-holing someone you admire at one of our panels or a business breakfast.
Over the past four years Roxy has screened over 1000 films, from recent releases to classics and cult favourites all at ‘probably the coolest cinema venue in London, if not the UK'!
Coming up soon is the very special 10 week season of 40 ‘extraordinary' feature films with guest speakers, live rescores and much more. Not just the usual classics, but a selection of movies from around the world that have pushed the boundaries of filmmaking, from the landmark to the innovative, the controversial to the ground-breaking.
Michael Haneke's critically-acclaimed The White Ribbon, which was released on DVD yesterday, is a chilling look behind the apparently normal façade of a small north German village in the lead-up to the First World War.
Narrated by one of the most sympathetic characters, the schoolteacher, when he has become an old man, the film shows us brutal events, some apparently perpetrated by children, but gives us very few answers as to why they have happened. The schoolteacher narrator supposes, with hindsight, that this generation of children were displaying their capability for cruelty before growing up to become the Nazi generation.
Filmed in black and white, making the setting feel even more removed in time from our own, The White Ribbon is a film that shows but rarely tells. Children are beaten by their parents, by people who are never caught, daughters are sexually abused by their fathers and women have to submit to the power of their husbands or fathers. The pastor, preaches his puritanical brand of Protestantism, as symbolised by the white ribbon he would tie around his children's arms, to remind them to be good. However, he rules his household with an iron fist, causing his children to rebel in the most extreme ways.
This Spring, AND will lead you on a digital journey across real and virtual worlds, set against the scenic backdrops of Cumbria and Lancashire - abandon the city and head for the hills....
Expect strange, playful and radical interventions across the northwest's natural landscape, with high-wire adventures in Grizedale Forest,an inflatable cinema in Preston, and organised chaos as we dance on masswith Improv Everywhere in Blackburn.
With innovative new commissions from pioneering net artists Ubermorgen, James Coupe and Geoffrey Alan Rhodes, a host of projects will map the region as artists, engineers and designers force us to question our relationship to nature and technology.
Here's some picks of filmmaker owned and distributed free (as in lunch) feature films you can download or watch online that really stood out over the last year. Most of them are 'pay what you want' and as ultra-indies they are produced, distributed and promoted by the filmmaker - so anything you donate goes to help them pay off their debts and make more.
Nasty Old People
Hanna Sköld, Sweden, 2009,
Pensioners and the far right make unlikely bedfellows in this remarkably accomplished debut feature from Hanna Sköld. It follows the angry, headstrong yet arresting Mette who in her work as a carer is given some of the most stubborn, difficult and neglected old people of her community. She is also a neo-Nazi.
It's a set-up I haven't seen at cinema before and the inevitable turning point for her could easily have been played for cheap and preachy point-scoring. Instead it's a complex and thoughtful drama, often funny and interspersed with mumblecore-y animations. It's peppered with broad and mostly believable characters. It's not perfect, but for a film made mostly on a €10,000 budget, with some completion funds from Film i Skåne, shot over a year in weekends and evenings, it's perhaps the first pay-what-you can live action film that looks and feels like a much bigger budget European arthouse film.
RIP is one of those films I've resisted seeing for ages because I thought it would just repeat the same arguments we've heard countless times from the copyfighting movement. More fool me - it's an entertaining and fascinating film, with a good pacing things to keep the interest up. It's central debate centres on the contrary attitude of the media industry who have made so much money from hip-hop, fairy tales and spoofs - towards remix, mashups and sampling. This issue, which currently prevents much of the creative sector from monetising such work, without a well paid media team does occasionally get confused with the more complex and debatable area of the pirate movement. Nevertheless it asks fair questions - I don't have a right to opt out from the 3,000+ adverts I see each day, and now they are lodged in my headspace, surely I have some ownership over them. Or rather, if, as Churchill said, 'the empires of the future are the empires of the mind' then the ability to adapt and remix that culture is a vital part of keeping such empires in check.
Self-funded and made entirely in Flash, Nina Paley's retelling of the Indian epic Ramayana has been screened around the world and picked up dozens of awards and much acclaim. The songs of Annette Hanshaw weave links between the present-day story of the breakup of Nina's relationship, against the classic love tale of Sita and Rama.
Doubtless embittered by her own experiences, Paley scoffs at the Ramayana's portrayal of devotion and patience in the face of a break-up, and the film has picked up some criticism in India. Nevertheless the running improvised commentary by a group of a shadow puppets, the technicolor animation and songs of Leti, which were a discovery for me, plus the openness with which Paley shares her experience, made it a moving experience. And as it's under a Creative Commons license - if you think you can improve any part of it, you can make your own cut. As well as the video file, Archive.org hosts versions in everything up to 4k size if you're able to get your hands on a digital cinema projector.
From Edinburgh-based American Peter Gerrard and upcoming Scottish production company Accidental Media (nominated for five new Talent Scottish BAFTAs), J2GAR is a graffiti documentary which takes us around America to explore the route of possibly the most visually recognisable and impacting art movements of our generation. Short at under an hour we don't get to hear from the many people to whom graff is a nuisance or hear mention of Banksy, but everything else seems to be here, including the guys who invented bubble lettering.
Born of Hope dir: Kate Madison, UK-Int, 2009 / The Hunt for Gollum dir: Chris Bouchard
Want to experience more of middle Earth but can't wait until the New Line Hobbit films arrive, Born of Hope is a 70 minute feature telling the tale of Arathorn and Gilrean, the parents of Aragorn. For an illustration of quite high the production values of 'no-budget' self-financed work can go, the burgeoning Lord of the Rings universe fan-films promise much. The 40 minute Hunt for Gollum was the first serious fan-film from the universe released, set before the first Lord of the Rings book/film and featuring sme stunning British countryside that no doubt must have helped inspire Tolkein when first describing middle earth. Both come with the obligatory copyright disclaimer but also supportive quotes from members of the WETA team suggesting on this occasion New Line/Peter Jackson concluded non-profit fan support will benefit the franchise more than harm it.
Last night I rewatched Tarsem's, The Fall. I first saw it at Edinburgh Film Festival in 2008 amidst a dreamy stream of great films. Starting with a bong toking Ben Kingsley going through a breakup in The Wackness, to a man named Nick discovering the delights of Swedish spiritualism through the painfully funny Three Miles North of Molkom, onto Wayne Wang's 1000 years of Good Prayers, taking its title from the ancient Chinese saying 'true love comes once in a thousand years of good prayers'. Then before the festival was done I was back in Sweden with Let the Right One In, and finally Wall*E, Pixar's first proper romance and a brutal anti-capitalist statement to boot.
And because of the strengths of all these films I never got round to writing about how much I liked The Fall. It is easy to dismiss it at first glance as the camp melodrama of a music video director, hungry to clock airmiles to shoot eye candy in the most exotic places his lucky location team could find. But beneath the lush visuals is the story of a suicidal and heartbroken man trying to find a reason to live, and how his imagination, and the encouragement of his good hearted friend, help him.
Another year, a new design. This has been a while in coming, and is built on the Blueprint CSS framework, with some tableless Joomla code from YooTheme. The backgrounds should change with the time of day and are taken from the Creative Commons BY Pool on Flickr, found via the brilliant CompFight.com (credits and links for the photographers at the foot of the page). I've not yet figured out how to change the site time to show the time (and hence images) correct for wherever you're viewing from, so for now sunrise and sunset times are all based on GMT. There's still quite a few bits to tweak, so please bear with us and speak up if anything doesn't work.
The theme of the fifth Africa in Motion (AiM) Film Festival is "Celebrations" and African filmmakers are invited to submit documentaries relating to this theme to be considered for inclusion in the October 2010 festival. This is an opportunity for African filmmakers to showcase their work at one of the most prestigious African film festivals worldwide and to gain exposure to a wide audience in the UK.
This year 17 African countries are celebrating 50 years of independence, and the documentaries should explore the legacy of colonisation, liberation struggles, independence and nationalism of any of these countries.
Is the end of February already. It only feels like five minutes ago when the tinsel was all around and the Xmas decorations were up. Actually, it was, but that’s because Laurence Boyce has been dead busy watching a new batch of DVDs for you to all enjoy. Let Special Edition # 37 take you on its usual journey through some of the best shiny discs for you to enjoy from brand new feature films to the latest collections of classic TV series.
OK, I will have to say that I am not exactly what you would call the target audience for The Time Traveller’s Wife (Entertainment in Video) a fantasy drama based on the chick-lit novel from Audrey Niffenegger. I didn’t melt and/or weep at the predicament of Eric Bana who, thanks to a rare genetic disorder, finds himself time travelling throughout his own lifetime (I’m sorry, but I must have missed that as being something to watch out for and the doctor’s must have been great at his birth: “Fingers and toes, normal. Breathing, fine. Ability to live linearly in the time and space continuum. Bugger.”). And I was slightly cynical when he attempts to build a normal life with the love of his life despite continually vanishing into a different time zone (wouldn’t his beloved be the slightest bit suspicious? “Um, yes darling. You know when I disappear for ages. I’m time-travelling. Honestly.”) I didn’t cry buckets as love tried to conquer all across the dimensional divide. But I am cynical bloke. Despite the fact that I am seemingly cold and emotionless, this is all very well done with Bana being both charming and angst-ridden whilst the love of his life is ably played by Rachel McAdams, and it’s a glossy slice of genre and romantic cinema if you’re into that sort of thing.
Power to the Pixel has opened applications for The Pixel Lab - its new cross-media residential workshop, to be held 4-10 July in Wales.
The Pixel Lab is a unique, project-led workshop which will enable European producers and media professionals to tap into the business knowledge-base of the film, online, gaming, broadcast and mobile industries.
This intensive week-long workshop, led by international cross-media experts, will consist of a mixture of group work, one-to-one meetings, plenary sessions and case studies; a tailored, hands-on opportunity for developing, packaging, marketing and distributing cross-media stories.
Producer participants will additionally benefit from focused distance learning project-work between the end of the residency and October, when they will be invited to attend Power to the Pixel’s Cross-Media Forum in London and present their projects to potential international partners.
While BAFTA was making history on Sunday with all four directing awards going to women, Yorkshire based Mohamed Al Daradji's Iraq set feature follow-up to Ahlaam became the only British film* to take any awards at the 60th Berlinale. Following its success in Sundance, Son of Babylon - a road movie that looks, with 'humor and lightness' at reconciliation and healing in post-Saddam Iraq - took the Amnesty International Film Prize Award and The Peace Prize Award.
Al-Daradji said "I would like to thank the juries who are honouring SON OF BABYLON with such prestigious awards for the film and my country, Iraq. I would like to dedicate this award to our IRAQ'S MISSING Campaign. I hope through these awards we will be able to give answers to my main character Shehzad Hussen who for the last 22 years has been searching for her husband and also for my sister whose husband disappeared 5 months ago."
During the Berlin Film Festival, ‘SON OF BABYLON’ had five fully sold out screenings with standing ovations, resulting in the film being in the top five for the audience choice award in the Panorama section. The producers of the film have pledged that both prize awards, which total 10,000 Euros, will go directly to the IRAQ’S MISSING campaign as they aim to communicate the extent of the genocide.
*actually an 8-party UK / Iraq / France / UAE / Eqypt / Palestine / Netherlands co-production
New features from Peter Mullan, Paul Andrew Williams, Hideo 'the Ring' Nakata, Stephen Frears, Mike Leigh, artist Gillian Wearing, Neil Marshall and James 'Man on a Wire' Marsh have all received production finance from the UK Film Council.
The latest details of production and development finance has been released with perhaps its strongest slate of productions since inception. Other production highlights include the sequel to East is East (West is West), a doc on the life of cinematographer Jack Cardiff (interviewed here by Stephen Applebaum), a reworking of Graham Greene's Brighton Rock and Morag MacKinnon's second feature in Lars von Trier's Scottish Advance Party Trilogy, Donkeys (the first being Andrea Arnold's acclaimed Red Road).
The development awards include new work from Lynne Ramsay, Andrea Arnold, Lee Hall, Nick Hornby, Conor McPherson, Jeanette Winterton, Hanif Kureishi, Noel Clarke, Simon Beaufoy, Danny Huston, Paddy Considine, Frank Cotrell-Boyce, Michael Winterbottom, Christopher Hampton, Matt Greenhalgh, Stephen Fry and Tony Grisoni.
Africa United
Marking the feature film directorial debut of Debs Gardner-Paterson, Africa United is the extraordinary story of three Rwandan children who run away from home in a bid to take part in the opening ceremony of the 2010 Football World Cup in Johannesburg. On their epic 3000 mile journey they gather a "dream team" of displaced kids through whose eyes we witness an Africa few have ever seen. Written by Rhidian Brook. A UK/Rwanda/South African co-production produced by Mark Blaney, Jackie Sheppard and Eric Kabera alongside co-producers Mark Hubbard and Lance Samuels. Funding awarded: £500,000 (production)
Attack the Block
The writer-directorial debut of Joe 'Adam and Joe' Cornish, about a gang of south London teenagers defending their tower block against an alien attack. Produced by Nira Park, James Wilson and executive produced by Matthew Justice, all for Big Talk Pictures. Funding awarded: development (Big Talk slate); £1,094,239 (production)
While BAFTA was 
