Festivals and Events

In this contemporary London romance directed by award-winning director Emily Harris (Three Towers) and cult film veteran Ate de Jong (Drop Dead Fred), Vida, a young Jewish cellist from a wealthy background, falls madly in love with Arthur, a talented visual artist from a working class Welsh family. Will their passion for each other overcome the obstacles they face as they move in together and meet each other’s families? Though the film may not give us a definite answer, the way its (…)

"In that silent room, I heard two sounds. One high, and one low. Afterward I asked the engineer in charge why, if the room was so silent, I had heard two sounds. He said: “Describe them.” I did. He said “The high one was your nervous system in operation. The low one was your blood in circulation.” – John Cage, on his experience in Harvard’s anechoic chamber At this year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest I saw Stefan Sagmeister’s dick, live voguing, and more than one dead child. The massive range and (…)

London-based performance artist Bryony Kimmings first came to public attention with 7 Day Drunk, a show put together under the influence of alcohol. The subject of new documentary Credible Likeable Superstar Role Model is another ‘real world experiment’ by Kimmings, who is now under the influence of her nine year-old niece, Taylor. As an idea for a theatre show, this is brilliant: enough with Miley Cyrus! (That’s 2013 twerking Miley Cyrus, not 2015 gender queer activist Miley Cyrus.) Let’s (…)

Stories of our Lives is a sequence of five tales sourced from real life experiences of gay Kenyans. The film uses the same crisp, saturated black and white photography across its five sections. Even though this creates a flattening of visual tone, the films-within-the-film each have a different feel. ‘Ask me Nicely’ is briskly punctuated by a school bell but its scenes are also divided by images of clouds, in turn expressive of the absurd conventions and nebulous hopes that define (…)

Also released under ’Alda and Maria’, the inspiration for the feature film was director Pocas Pascoal’s own life (see interview here) and the need for Angolan migrants to tell their stories. Of course, this is the reflection of a woman looking back as a migrant forced from home by war and conscription, but it tells the larger story of nationalism and identity. The story begins with newly-arrived-to-Portugal Angolan sisters Alda and Maria exploring the new landscape and looking for friends (…)

I almost didn’t watch Ayanda as the synopsis described the title character as an Afro-hipster. Did that really need a racial qualifier in South Africa? Why is the racial default for hipsters white? Things will never change if we keep normalising whiteness. Nevertheless, I’m glad I moved past it as the film has something to say about family and the agency to dream. The adage ’it takes money to make money’ is clearly illustrated in Ayanda’s bid to save her father’s car shop from being sold, (…)

The Bristol Radical Film Festival returns for its fourth edition. It has partnered up with the Arnolfini gallery in Bristol to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first ever Festival of Independent British Cinema. The festival, a milestone in the history of alternative and radical cinema, screened political and experimental films, showcasing community engagement, social and political concerns and new aesthetic approaches of the time. Now, more than four decades down the line, the (…)

We caught up with director Jordan Schiele at this year’s Encounters festival in Bristol. His funny, off-beat short The Turtle was screened and made our very own Mydy awards list! How did you get into filmmaking? Going to the movies or the videostore was a hobby that my parentsshared with my sister and me. We both became filmmakers. I never thought of it as a career, but just something to try out that got me excited. When I lived in Shanghai, I had a Swedish friend making his first (…)

No. 27 Dir Lola Peploe France 2015 21 mins Fr Lilly Page est une jeune Anglaise partie vivre son rêve d’aspirante romancière dans la Ville Lumière. Dans ce Paris fantasmé, tout peut arriver. C’est donc sans trop de surprise que dans une librairie, Lilly trouve une annonce déposée par un homme qui fait commerce des rêves que l’on veut bien lui vendre. Le premier court métrage de Lola Peploe, une jeune réalisatrice anglaise, est une rêverie pleine de poésie joliment interprétée par Emily (…)

We caught up with writer/director Dan Hodgson at Encounters in Bristol. His second film LOVE IS BLIND was screened at Encounters and has been shortlisted for a short film Palme d’or at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival. Can you tell us a bit about how your first short-Are You Albert-came about? In the final few years of her life my grandma was in a care home with dementia and the idea grew from there. I wrote it up in an afternoon for Film London’s short film scheme and although it wasn’t (…)