myDylarama

Our Picks + Women In Body Horror

Abla Kandalaft, Coco Green, Georgina Allan — 2021-01-19T10:35:57Z

This week, we are joined by Georgina Allan, film editor for the Radical Art Review to talk about women in horror, specifically focusing on Julia Ducournau's Raw and Alice Lowe's Prevenge and their representations of women as complex protagonists and instigators of violence (as opposed to helpless victims or mindless monsters).

We mention Jordan Peele's Us, Marina De Van's In My Skin and Don't Look Back and others.

Picks of the week include Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson's mind warping, beautiful Synchronic and Channel 4 series Adult Material, a three-dimensional, intelligent and nuanced look at the world of porn and the tendrils that reach into all spheres of public and private life.

Finally, we flag the upcoming International Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival 29 Jan - 6 Feb - as official partner, Mydylarama will play host to interviews with all competition filmmakers - and Emerging Filmmakers Night's winter edition on 25 Jan, which includes three workshops (funding applications, screenwriting and festival strategy) that are free to join to our subscribers. See below!

As usual, comments and feedback welcome via Twitter @Mydylarama

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Our Picks And American Horror Story: Apocalypse

Abla Kandalaft, Coco Green — 2020-08-05T14:38:44Z

Another fortnight, another episode! We start with our picks and move on to a discussion about American Horror Story: Apocalypse (S8, 2018).

As huge horror fans, we'll have other episodes down the line in this genre....

Coco's Top Pick is American Son (2019), performed as a one set straight play, in which an interracial couple waits at the police station for news of their teenage son's whereabouts, revealing the lies a family has told themselves about political race and the limitations of family and love. Despite the gratification of seeing Nia Long and Omar Epps in a sexy thriller, the best thing to say about Fatal Affair (2020) is that it should be saved for date night when you don't really need to finish the film. Two documentaries worth watching are Cannabis (S1E5, The Business of Drugs, 2020), which provides the history of small businesses pushing for legalising the cannabis industry in California and the encroachment of big businesses, and Holy Hell (2016), chronicling 22 years of the Buddhafield cult with file footage from the their videographer, Will Allen, and capturing the emotional journey of Allen's path to accepting the truth.

Abla's picks are thin on the ground, so thankfully Coco's detailed comments more than make up for that! These are Season 1 of The Sinner on Netflix, an intriguing suspenseful watch, led by Jessica Biel and Bill Pullman who both pull off nuanced and engaging performances. Abla brings it up because it illustrates a point about some police departments in the US that resorted to pinning crimes on one person to help expedite cases. This was discussed in this thoroughly informative podcast: In The Dark (Season 1). She's also flagging the upcoming Independent Iraqi Film Festival, which will be screened online, showcasing work often made in very difficult conditions. Keep on eye out for updates on their website.

American Horror Story (2011–present) is a 9 season series that airs on FX. Apocalypse (S8) incorporates the characters and storylines from S1, the 12-episode Murder House (2011) and S3, the 13-episode Coven (2013–14). Apocalypse can be summarised as Hogwarts meets The Shining (1980) meets Ghost (1990) meets Rosemary's Baby (1968) meets The Exorcist (1973) meets Lost (2004–2010) meets The Stand (1994). Although Coco thinks the film does avoid the magical Negro trope, which is endemic in horror and fantasy genres, the Benetton Dream Team cast Blacks, Asians, and Latinos is not enough to cover up the two-dimensional strong, black, and unnecessarily single women, e.g., Queenie (Gabourey Sidibe) and Voodoo Queen Marie Laveau (Angela Bassett); but the series is good fun overall, telling an old story in an interesting way, so is recommended.

This week's picks - Striking Colour Schemes

George Crosthwait — 2020-05-04T13:01:25Z

Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival [JAEFF] producer George Crosthwait picks his three favourite films currently available on streaming platforms in the UK. This time tailored to suit precise days. It's May and the world is looking lush and vibrant (and empty). So this time I'm recommending three films with particularly striking colour schemes.

Viva - BFI Player

Watch on: Wednesday (because like a bored 70s housewife, you'll only get through the rest of the week with cocktails and pastel colours).

Wandering through the twisting labyrinths of Netflix and Amazon Prime is maddening even when only occasionally required. With home entertainment the only entertainment, maybe you're becoming more acquainted with streaming libraries than you ever dreamed possible. Now those endless “failure-to-choose-your-adventure” searches transcend frustration and erode your love of movies itself (dear Netflix algorithm, stop trying to make me watch Extraction). Praise be then for BFI Player's “Collections” category for providing some thematic coherence to salve the choice-bloat of the larger VOD platforms.

The BFI Flare LGBTIQ+ collection is a fabulous starting point, full of queer jewels and softens the loss of the festival's physical presence earlier this year. There's a ton of great stuff here but my personal pick is the uniquely talented Anna Biller's (The Love Witch) Viva. Ostensibly a pastiche of Russ Meyer-type 70s sexploitation, Viva (Biller herself) is your typical bored suburban housewife looking for sex, cocktails and liberation. Unlike films such as Black Dynamite, the recreation of genre aesthetics in Viva is both amazingly exact and surprisingly unreflexive. Biller herself frequently rebuffs terms like “homage” and “pastiche”, challenging her audience to view her films on their own terms. Indeed, her deliberate colour palette is like nothing else in contemporary cinema, something that we might only appreciate once we deactivate our desire to make comparisons to older films (a critical habit that's hard to break). Viva is a work of high camp that nonetheless demands sincerity and rejects irony. A most ludicrous and enjoyable film that is somehow shockingly serious.

Revenge - Shudder

Watch on: Friday (because it's the end of the working/furloughed week and you either need to blow off some steam or generate some energy for the weekend).

On the face of it, Revenge is another entry into the grottiest of cinema sub-genres: rape-revenge. Neither leaning on the male-avenger trope of Straw Dogs or The Virgin Spring/Last House on the Left, nor the cheap titillation of I Spit on Your Grave, Revenge aims to flip the stereotypes and gender roles around. The rape is deeply uncomfortable and un-sensationalised; the revenge is just really, really painful. Taking place in an unspecified and empty desert space, Revenge becomes a sandpit for eye-bleeding evisceration shot in extreme colour saturation. (male) Nude bodies glisten (with blood) under a burning sky as Jen (Mathilde Lutz) slays her way out of her nightmare vacation.

The recent successes of The Hunt and Bacurau suggest we're currently all down for a bit of human hunting in our life. Revenge will scratch that itch whilst staring down genre misogyny and providing some wince-inducing catharsis.

Ran – Mubi

Watch on: Sunday (because its an immensely long feudal war epic).

Amongst the many cinematic casualties of COVID-19, and particularly hard for me to take, is the postponement of the BFI's massive Japan season, which had been due to start this month. A planned restoration of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai has also been shelved, but we can take some comfort by settling in with his (arguably—depends how you feel about Richard Gere) final masterpiece: the magnificent King Lear adaptation Ran. Kurosawa revised Shakespearean tragedies several times throughout his career. The Bad Sleep Well loosely used the structure of Hamlet, the wonderful and ghostly Throne of Blood (coming soon to BFI Player) took on Macbeth and Ran sets Lear in Feudal Japan.

Having already secured a place amongst the greats with his films made during the golden age of Japanese cinema, Kurosawa proved himself to be a master of colour with late period work such as Kagemusha, Dersu Uzala and Dreams. “The Emperor” was exacting and exacerbating in his methods. Chris Marker's quasi-making-of-Ran, A.K. (also showing on Mubi this month) shows Kurosawa demanding that his production team paint an entire field of reeds gold in order to achieve the desired aesthetic quality. The scene was later cut from the final version of the film. Ran features a signature role for Tatsuya Nakadai (as the Lear surrogate), one of the greatest actors in cinema history. Also present is queer icon Pītā (Funeral Parade of Roses) as the Fool.

Ran is filmmaking on a scale to rival anything that Kurosawa, or anyone else, had attempted to date. It is one of the great historical epics and arguably the greatest imagining of Shakespeare ever set to celluloid.

VOD Picks Of The Week - Japanese triple bill

George Crosthwait — 2020-04-20T20:05:56Z

Japanese Avant-garde and Experimental Film Festival [JAEFF] producer George Crosthwait picks his three favourite Japanese films currently available on streaming platforms in the UK.

Visitor Q – Mubi

First up is something thoroughly deranged. Takashi Miike's no-budget tale of incest, domestic violence and lactation, shot on unappealing digital video. It's a comedy.

This won't come as a surprise to followers of Miike's career. A famously hard working filmmaker (over 100 films in less than 30 years) whose genre hopping tales of excess made him a poster director for Tartan's “Asia Extreme” DVD imprint in the late 90s/early 00s. Whilst Miike delivered a string of jidaigeki action epics in the 2010s (Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai, Thirteen Assassins, Blade of the Immortal), and the recent gangster/boxing film First Love (released in UK cinemas in January), it was through his earlier hyperviolent and surreal films such as Audition, Ichi the Killer, The Happiness of the Katakuris and Gozu that he made his name.

Visitor Q oozes out of this period, and perhaps tops the lot in terms of risqué content. Ostensibly a riff on Pier Paolo Pasolini's 1968 satire of the bourgeois family, Teorema, Visitor Q likewise annihilates its middle-class milieu. In Pasolini's film, the family are seduced and liberated by a mysterious stranger. In Miike's updating, the family are abused and traumatised by both the titular visitor and each other. Their liberation, if we can call it that, comes from the evaporation of taboos and pleasure of transgression. If you can access the wavelength of this hysterical satire then you too may be released from the restrictions of your social coding (if not from your lockdown).

The Night is Short, Walk On Girl – Netflix

If, like me, in times of strife you seek solace in the loving embrace in anime, then you're probably spending a fair amount of lockdown life working through Netflix's auspiciously timed deployment of Studio Ghibli's entire catalogue. But Ghibli is not the last word for Anime, and Netflix offers a (patchy) selection of delights beyond the gateway drugs of Totoro and Ponyo. On furlough with endless hours stretching out ahead? No better time than to dive into Hideaki Anno's Neon Genesis Evangelion (a kind of anime Twin Peaks). Other choice cuts include pre-Your Name work from Makoto Shinkai (Garden of Words), a rare example of anime directed by a woman (A Silent Voice), and the inventive Hiroshima-set WW2 drama In This Corner of the World.

My pick for this week, however, is Masaaki Yuasa's The Night is Short, Walk On Girl. A Lewis Carroll inspired, offbeat odyssey encompassing an epic pub crawl, an improvised musical play within a film, a viral epidemic (how topical), a mysterious after dark second-hand book fair, unrequited romance and clandestine shunga traders, all in the course of one long (short) night!

Often citing René Laloux's 1973 classic symbolist sci-fi animation The Fantastic Planet as his key inspiration, Yuasa's wildly imaginative brand of surrealism has garnered him a dedicated following. Films like Mind Game, Lu Over the Wall, and adaptations of novelist Tomohiko Morimi (The Night is Short, Walk On Girl; The Tatami Galaxy) demonstrate the possibilities afforded to an animator with only a passing relationship to logic. Given that civilisation no longer makes any sense, why not dive into an animated world where nonsense rules supreme.

Still Walking – Curzon Home Cinema / BFI Player (rental)

My final pick goes to Hirokazu Kore-eda; a household name following the Palme d'Or winning Shoplifters, and fresh off his first film made in Europe: The Truth. As seen in the latter, return to the childhood home and intergenerational relationships are two Kore-eda staples. These themes never crystallised as perfectly as in my personal favourite Kore-eda film, 2008's Still Walking.

Still Walking plays as a kind of reversal of Tokyo Story (don't say this to Kore-eda, he loathes the constant comparisons to Ozu) where the grown-up children visit their elderly parents. To me, Still Walking is a fulcrum around which the rest of Kore-eda's filmography turns. The aforementioned themes aside, the cast includes some of his favourite actors: the great, and sadly late, Kirin Kiki, Hiroshi Abe (I Wish, After the Storm) and You (best known now for Terrace House!); there is a strong focus on food preparation and eating; and a final Kore-eda trope, the train. Without giving too much away, there is one long take at the end of the film which captures a train sliding across the screen. It's very simple, although the timing is very precise. It's one of my favourite moments in cinema.

Not much happens in Still Walking. The family argues and reminisces. Food is eaten. Walks are taken. This is a film of quiet moments and contemplation. Its a film that requires you to sync with its rhythm. If you do, you should achieve a sense of beautiful calm. A welcome meditation during these testing times.

Short of the Week: Carnal Orient by Mila Zuo

carrie — 2019-08-09T15:32:09Z

A cook serves exotic dishes to his hungry, impatient guests. Suddenly the arrival of a mysterious Asian woman re-ignites their insatiable appetite.

Mila Zuo's atmospheric short is incredibly rich in symbolism and references, conscious or not - from Lynch to Fruit Chan's dumplings.

This short is brought to us by the fab horror film platform @WatchALTER. There's a whole treasure trove on their Youtube page.

Possum

Kai Ellis — 2018-10-25T10:08:26Z

Matthew Holness, perhaps best known as the creator of cult pastiche television horror comedy Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, makes his debut as a feature director in much darker territory with Possum. Originally a short story written by Holness in response to Freud's essay ‘Das Unheimliche' (The Uncanny), Possum takes us to the near-deserted fenlands of Norfolk, where Sean Harris' Philip, a children's puppeteer, has returned to his run-down, boarded-up family home. He carries with him a compact leather bag, inside which the titular Possum is contained. Rather than the small furry Australian mammal initially brought to mind by the title, it is instead a manifestation of Philip's worst fears, initially seen just off-screen as a bundle of spindly, spider-like legs, and later revealed to be a strange hybrid of spider and man, a body-less creature with a human head. Philip is haunted by this mutated spider-man throughout the film, its mask mirroring his own features, in a permanent dark-eyed, tortured expression. Also at the family home is Maurice, Philip's Uncle, played with understated menace by veteran actor Alun Armstrong. Uncle Maurice is a malevolent, nicotine-fingered presence throughout the film, goading Philip to show him his puppetry skills using The Possum, as well as referring to a recent scandal Philip is evidently fleeing from and taunting him to retell a particularly painful memory from his childhood about the death of a fox.

Holness is clearly an aficionado of British horror in the 1960s and 70s, both on film and television, as well as early silent films such as Nosferatu and M. The opening credits, the British Rail station with its antiquated signage and slam door trains, as well as an eerie electronic soundtrack courtesy of The Radiophonic Workshop, all evoke a sense of 70s British horror director Pete Walker's Frightmare or Dr Who (late member of The Radiophonic Workshop, Delia Derbyshire - who died in 2001 - is credited with "additional sound design elements.") The dilapidated family home calls to mind The Overlook hotel, with its garish patterned, faded orange and brown furnishings. Along with a deserted Army Cadet barracks, and the school Philip attended long ago, these largely empty locations start to represent Philip's inner state, where he is simultaneously in the present yet haunted by a lonely past, unable to escape his own experiences.

Both disturbing and scary, Possum and is an assured debut from Holness, anchored by strong performances from both Harris and Armstrong. Harris's central performance hearkens to those of the silent era, his character largely wordless throughout the duration of the film. Harris, who always brings a sense of unnerving, lived-through darkness to his roles, brings the same sense of unresolved trauma here. Philip is simultaneously a trapped child and a traumatised man, unable to reconcile with his past and fully move into adulthood. As the film progresses, it becomes clear what is manifested in the disturbing, unrelenting figure of the Possum. Despite Philip's best efforts to destroy it through drowning, burning or beating it to death, it returns again and again to haunt him and chase him until he finally confronts what it represents, perhaps by which time it is too late, in a harrowing final scene.

Possum will be released in cinemas on 26 Oct. There will be Q&A screenings in Edinburgh and Glasgow on 2nd and 3rd November.

Q&A with Sevé Schelenz, director of Skew and Peelers

Mydylarama team — 2017-02-05T17:46:09Z

Low-budget horror Skew, an ambitious first feature with some genuinely creepy moments, has become a bit of an underground hit. We've caught up with director Sevé, whose latest film Peelers has finished off doing the rounds of festivals everywhere.

Can you tell me a bit more about your background as a filmmaker?

Ever since I was a kid I wanted to make movies. I always had a camera in my hand, following my friends and family around, videotaping them, making up stories as I stalked them. If no one was willing to participate, I would get in front of the camera myself. I just wouldn't let anything stop me. This led me to film school at York University, where I got my degree in Fine Arts. After that, it was time to work in the film industry, but since they weren't handing out directing gigs on Hollywood Boulevard I had to content myself with a job in post production. I had a knack for editing and became an online editor and colourist. While working in post, I made my connections and networked and saved up enough money so that I could make my first full-length feature film, which was Skew. I didn't go after outside funding because I figured it would be a lot of time spent for naught and quite frankly, I'm glad I didn't. Everything came out of my own pocket and while that was rough, at least I got to call all the shots and all the risk was on me and no one else.

What sparked your interest in the horror genre? What were your major
influences?

I definitely love all genres of film, but you can have so much fun with horror. What drew me to the horror genre is the challenge to come up with something that really scares people. Everyone has a fear of something and while some fears are universal, others can be very particular. I wanted to delve into my own fears and see if others shared them as well. Which is why I chose to do a psychological horror rather than an all-out gore fest with Skew. All-out gore doesn't scare me at all, but mess with the psyche and I'm looking for the light switch and checking under the bed. As for major influences for Skew, definitely The Blair Witch Project. It was something so different and new at the time, which made it exciting; and at the same time it scared the crap out of me. That film lingered for a long time after it was over. I also just love the old school horrors like Halloween and The Omen. That slow building sense of dread is achieved so beautifully in these films. I love it.

Can you tell us a bit more about the production process for Skew? (Funds,
shooting, distribution...)

"It was like being in a clown car at the circus and videotaping the whole thing. "

What were your major obstacles and what did you
find particularly helpful?

The idea for Skew was born of the fact that I was bankrolling the whole project and the funds were few and far between, so I thought to myself, how can I come up with a feature film where I can get away with minimal crew, cast, locations, effects, and fancy, expensive cameras and have the audience accept it as such and not complain about production value, etc.? And so the answer came in the form of a found footage style film. Everyone accepts the fact that the footage in these films is raw and rough around the edges because it's a representation of “reality” as recorded by amateur/unprofessional cinematographers (i.e. the average person). Some of the major obstacles were definitely the long distances we had to travel in order to get out of the city to give the impression of being on a road trip; location scouting was also difficult, as we had to find some very specific types of locations, like a closed down gas station…I didn't realize how hard it was to find one! And probably the most challenging was shooting while driving…trying to fit a director and a 6 foot 4 sound guy in a small car along with the camera and three actors proved to be quite the feat…it was like being in a clown car at the circus and videotaping the whole thing.

As for what was the most helpful, one aspect would be having rehearsals before shooting. This allowed the actors to be prepared on set which was so beneficial, especially when shooting guerilla-style the way we were. Also, having a small cast and crew was amazing because everyone took it upon themselves to help each other out and be there for one another. As a result, we became a very intimate, supportive unit and that was indispensable.

How did Peelers come about? How would you introduce it to people who've
yet to see it?

My sales agent on Skew suggested I make another horror film because they're easier to sell in the indie market. His only two requirements were that it have more blood and more nudity. I was definitely on board for having more blood and gore, but while I'm all for nudity in general, I just didn't want to make a film with gratuitous boob shots. So I thought, where can I have a horror film take place where nudity is the norm? And the location for Peelers was born. I then approached Lisa DeVita (Devits), whom I played baseball with and I knew she was working on her own screenplays and pitched her the idea of writing a horror script that takes place in a strip club. Devits used to live in Las Vegas so she had lots of source material and she jumped at the chance to write the script. We both have the same sense of humor and we worked really well together so it turned out to be an amazing director-writer partnership.

As for how I would introduce Peelers to people, I would probably say: “If you're easily offended, don't bother watching it. But if you love the idea of being potentially insulted, then enjoy!” Whether people are easily offended or not, they'll be curious enough to check it out. No matter how sick and twisted a person thinks he or she is, there's at least one moment in the film that seems to push everyone's button.

What are your plans with it?

Our plans with Peelers? To dominate the world. Well, I guess that's sort of unrealistic… so far. We just want to get the film out for everybody to see. When you've spent this amount of time on a project and the festival reaction has been so good, you just want to share it with the world. I hope to find the type of audience that really digs fun action horror films. We have some distribution happening very shortly and are really pumped to see how our fans dig it.

Any plans for the future?

Peelers 2? Direct the Spider-man movie that I actually want to see (‘cuz it hasn't happened yet)? Learn Klingon? I think, after some time to do absolutely nothing and rest from this 24-7 experience, we'll see which one of our next projects grabs us. We've got quite a few of them at different stages of development and have to decide what's the best project to move forward on. The writer and myself come from more of a comedic background so we'll see if that's a direction we want to go. We may even look into the dreaded world of outside funding for this go round.

What advice would you give filmmakers starting out?

Prepare to not have a life. If you really really want to make films then you have to live and breathe it 24-7. You have to be aware and work on every aspect of it all the time. Like sports, nothing comes without practice and always trying to do better at your craft. You can't make something truly be the best if you don't give it your all. Also, never give up. This is the one message I have on my phone because in true indie film style, 9 times out of 10 you will have the door closed or the phone hung up on you. You need to have thick skin and not take anything personal. Don't worry, positive vibes and determination will eventually get you that “yes” that you're looking for. Never Give Up.

Skew is available on DVD. More info on Peelers here.

Short of the Week - GIRL.LONDON.NIGHT - Filmic Pro Winner

Abla Kandalaft — 2016-07-03T11:24:15Z

This week's short comes to us courtesy of film collective Reframed, whose eerily beautiful GIRL.LONDON.NIGHT, written by and starring Reframed member Claire Gordon-Webster, has just won the Best Female Filmmaker award at the Filmic Pro Tangerine Dreams Contest competition.

The contest, now in its second year and named after feature film Tangerine, that was shot entirely on an iPhone, requires participants to make a short film using the FiLMiC Pro phone app.

Q&A with James Webber, Dir. Soror at the British Urban Film Fest

Abla Kandalaft — 2015-08-20T09:28:28Z

Soror is the latest short film from Driftwood writer/director James Webber and producer Roxanne Holman. The film stars Rosie Day, Sian Breckin, James Alexandrou, and Kate Dickie.
"Soror explores the lives and relationships of two half-sisters; Grace, insular and shy but a talented dancer; and Lisa, who dreams of escaping the confines of their upbringing. The close relationship shared by the sisters is the most important part of their lives; the only thing that truly means anything."
It will be screened at the upcoming British Urban Film Festival. James has most recently directed short horror film The Prey.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background and what drove you get into filmmaking?

Ever since I was a kid living in Bournemouth I have been obsessed with storytelling and filmmaking. I used to watch films non-stop and that has never really changed. The films from my childhood fuelled my passion and, as I grew up, I was introduced to films from all over the world. Once I'd left school, I went on to study film at the Arts Institute in Bournemouth and through that, and constantly making shorts, promos and music videos, I was able to relocate to London and eventually work full-time in the industry.

How did The Springhead Film Company come about?

I co-founded The Springhead Film Company with a view to make interesting, challenging and highly visual films. The company is a collective of creatives who all bring their own skills to the table. Having all worked together for a few years, it makes the filmmaking process so much easier. At the moment we are developing our first feature film, a drama called Solitude Country.

Tell us a little bit about your first directing experience on a short?

My first big experience in regards to the size of the production and having a large budget was my short film Driftwood, a sporting drama. It was a hugely enjoyable experience for me as I got to work not only with a fantastic crew but with exciting acting talent such as Neil Maskell (Kill List) and Sam Gittins (Ripper Street). Driftwood was easily the most ambitious project I had attempted up until that point and, for once, I didn't have to cut corners to tell the story I set out to make. When the film was complete it was screened extensively around the world on the festival circuit and was ultimately picked up for distribution and screened on Channel 4. When you make a film, the biggest goal is to be able to share it with the largest audience possible and I certainly feel Driftwood achieved this aim! You can see the making of the film here.

What have been the biggest hurdles in setting up a production company? In getting a short film made and screened?

The biggest hurdle regardless of the level you are working to is finding the budgets to make your project happen. I've been lucky to have been successful raising finance through crowdfunding and this has enabled me to make films in a way I couldn't before. It also means that I had the budget to expand my festival reach.

How do you select your team (producers, technicians, actors)?

When it comes to crew I've been able to build a great team across the last few films. As a director, it is so important to collaborate with like-minded individuals who share your vision and enthusiasm for the project. And of course you always want the best possible cast you can find. I've always been very ambitious with the various actors we've cast. I have never really worked with a casting director so we've always made direct contact with actors/agents ourselves. Luckily, even actors with higher profiles are willing to work on smaller projects if the role interests them.

What do you feel was key to getting your shorts screened at events and festivals?

I guess it comes down to the films themselves - If you do a good job on building a positive buzz behind a film then it will sell itself to a degree. We identified the festivals we wanted to hit before we even shot the film and worked to a very strict schedule in post to make sure that we could hit any deadlines. The team will also create a festival pack that will accompany a film during the submission process.

Can you tell us a little bit more about the idea behind your latest short The Prey?

I wanted to make a film about female stereotypes in horror, to subvert well worn genre conventions and turn them on their head! I had written the script years ago and put it in a drawer. Then last year I came across it and thought I'd take the leap and make my first horror short.

Why the sudden switch to horror?

Having worked almost entirely in drama for the last few years, creatively I fancied a change and do something utterly different. I love most kinds of film especially horror so it was great to finally get to try the genre. It was especially enjoyable working with visual effects and CG for the first time too.

What has been your best festival experience?

Receiving a Coup de Coeur at Cannes for Driftwood which was a complete surprise. It led to a distribution deal for the film and, ultimately, to our Channel 4 screening.

Any films you'd like to recommend currently doing the rounds on the festival circuit?

Three films I've seen recently that I thoroughly enjoyed were Stefan Georgiou's drama / comedy 'Sex Life', Cyrus Trafford's highly visual drama 'The Voice in the Head' and Rob Savage's horror 'Absence.' Definitely keep an eye out for them all!

Finally, what advice would you give filmmakers starting out in the sector?

Don't be afraid to make mistakes. The most important thing is to learn from those mistakes and take that knowledge into future projects. Short films are great for experimenting and finding your feet as a filmmaker before you make that big leap into larger projects.

More information and the full programme of screenings are available on the Urban Film Fest website.

Soror trailer:https://vimeo.com/100701866
The Prey BTS: https://vimeo.com/135847630
James's showreel:https://vimeo.com/87131209

It Follows

Abla Kandalaft — 2015-02-21T04:28:44Z

Critics' Week's best film (in this writer's opinion) has finally landed in the UK. I was surprised -and delighted- to find out a horror film was among the competition's selection, despite its championing of genre cinema. And I have to admit, shamefully, that I did think chances were it would be a little too experimental and left-field to really provoke genuine scares and jumps and provide pure entertainment. But David Robert Mitchell's It Follows is, in fact, bone-chillingly enjoyable.

At its Cannes screening, Mitchell said he had set out to make a "beautiful horror movie", and there can be no better description of the end result. It is a beautiful film to watch -with lingering, stylish shots of suburban Detroit- and all the elements, from the eerie score to the slow movements of the camera, are skilfully weaved together to create a continuous sense of dread and relentless tension, punctuated by occasional well-placed jolts. Unsurprisingly, Mitchell's direction has been compared to John Carpenter's work on Halloween.

Without revealing much in the way of plot, (the less you know the better, as it goes), Mitchell chose a simple and effective device: a shape-shifting, spectral, mysterious entity -the eponymous "It"- literally, slowly but determinedly following its prey: a WASPish promiscuous teenager. Indeed, this is a sexually transmitted curse, passed on from one suburban teen to another, in an infernal vicious circle, like the video in Ringu.

The film is released in the UK on 27 February.