UK Film Council Axed - Why oh Why ??

August 9th, 2010

Landing on the website of the UK Film Council you are prompted with the following headline: ‘We fund script development, film production, short films, film export and distribution, cinemas, film education, culture and archives, festivals and audience support schemes.’

That is an engaging and somehow philanthropist mission so why is it that Britain’s new Tory-LibDem coalition government is axing UK Film Council?

The UK Film Council’ 75 staff seem to have a pretty good track record at funding successful films like ‘Bend It Like Beckham, Fish Tank, Adulthood, Bright Star, The Constant Gardener, In The Loop, The Last King of Scotland and Vera Drake’. But that doesn’t seem to be enough for Jeremy Hunt, the fired-up new secretary of state for culture who gave a typical no non-sense answer: ”If we are going to face budget cuts I have a duty to ensure that taxpayers’ money is spent where it gets the most bang for its buck,” he said. “It is simply not acceptable in these times to fund an organization like the U.K .Film Council, where no fewer than eight of the top executives are paid more than £100,000”

Well, fair game especially in these times of austerity, but why don’t they just cut out some of the top brass but leave the budget distribution process intact ?

According to the BBC, this is how the approx. £26million money pot is spent:

•    Film production - £15m pa
•    Film distribution - £2m pa
•    Training - £3.25m pa
•    Regional film bodies - £6.3m

However, not everyone is unhappy about this decision, The FT Adviser has James Clayton, chief executive of Ingenious Media, saying “That has proved a great opportunity. It means private investment can take that position and have a choice between a debt profile or equity, depending on their risk/return profile. This can only be a very good thing”

At the moment, it is unclear how this will affect short films distribution, first of all because it is hard to find figures about how much of the UKFC budget is actually spent on short film. My view is that it doesn’t bode well…to be continued

SoD

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Cannes filmmakers

May 24th, 2010

Here are a few portraits of people who made it to Cannes with their short films.

Tijuana native’s film makes the cut at Cannes
Sometimes dares pay off.
Giancarlo Ruiz took two years to shoot “St. Jacques,” a short film that follows a man and a woman whose spouses drowned in the ocean and their struggle to cope with the loss. He submitted the 17-minute Spanish-language film, with English subtitles, to festivals across the country.
One night he surfed onto the Cannes Film Festival website and saw he could submit his work online for consideration. A friend dared him to do it, and Ruiz obliged, not expecting anything.
On March 30, the 38-year-old Tijuana native got an e-mail announcing that his film was selected to be shown at the prestigious festival, which started Wednesday and runs through May 23. He figured it had to be some sort of joke, until he got confirmation. It is believed to be the first film shot in the border city to be shown at Cannes.
Link Here

City boy’s short films make Cannes cut
SUDESHNA BANERJEE

Bauddhayan Mukherji
Mrinal Sen won’t be the only Calcuttan whose work (Kandahar) would be featured in the Cannes Film Festival this year. A campaign against domestic violence called Bell Bajao, directed by former student of South Point Bauddhayan Mukherji, has made it to the festival’s Short Film Corner.
The film is one of the six chosen in a section called Speak Out Against Domestic Violence Short Film Contest, with entries from the Netherlands, Mexico, the UK and the US. “The fact that it is a competitive section and that too in the Cannes Film Festival makes it so special,” says the 36-year-old Bauddhayan, who set up his production unit Little Lamb Films two years ago.
Link Here

The Insider | Jonathan Caouette
The Insider is a recurring profile of emerging tastemakers in the fields of fashion, design, food, travel and the arts.
When Jonathan Caouette’s first documentary film, “Tarnation,” screened at the Cannes Film Festival in 2004, the director was catapulted onto the world stage and praised for his scrappy, D.I.Y. approach to filmmaking. This month, Caouette returns to the Croisette with the world premiere of his trippy short film “All Flowers in Time,” starring Chloë Sevigny. And his 2009 documentary, “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” about the cult music festival of the same name is now out on DVD.
Link Here

Debut director lives Cannes dream
It might be where the stars come to tread the red carpet, but the Cannes Film Festival is also an important place for new talent to win their big break.
There is business to be made on the French Riviera, which is why first-time feature director Deborah Hadfield was so desperate to get here.
Link Here

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Cannes musings Day 1

May 12th, 2010

Today’s the day so here are a few info and stories from the world of Cannes, picked  from the web buzz (because i won’t attend this year’s festival)

  • One short film listed for Cannes ‘The Big Bends’.

After being diagnosed with a terminal disease, Warren chooses to pass his remaining days isolated in the Badlands of Big Bend. Within the vast landscape he locks himself inside of a small camper trailer and waits for death. The hush is broken as he is faced with a troubled Mexican couple crossing the border.
Director Bio:
Jason is making his debut as writer/director with ‘The Big Bends’. His first narrative work was as Creative Generalist on the feature ‘Ballast’. While writing his first feature in Paris, homesickness inspired him to write a story about a place that he didn’t know existed but knew where he hoped he could find it. His stories tend to involve geography, borders, identity and intersecting cultures.
Trailer

  • 49 semaine de la critique de Cannes

Compétition Courts-métrages
A Distraçao De Ivan de Cavi Borges & Gustavo Melo (Brésil)
Berik de Daniel Joseph Borgman (Danemark)
The Boy Who Wanted To Be A Lion de Alois Di Leo (Grande-Bretagne)
Deeper Than Yesterday de Ariel Kleiman (Australie)
Love Patate de Gilles Cuvelier (France)
Native Son de Scott Graham (Grande-Bretagne)
Vasco de Sébastien Laudenbach (France)

Séances Spéciales Courts et moyens métrages
L’Amour-propre de Nicolas Silhol (France)
Cynthia Todavia Tiene Las Llaves de Gonzalo Tobal (Argentine)
Fracture de Nicolas Sarkissian (France)
Bastard de Kirsten Dunst (Etats-Unis) & The Clerk’S Tale de James Franco (Présentés en soirée de clôture)

  • Short Films

There are nine short films entered into Cannes Film Festival this 2010 year. More women short filmmakers have made the final Cannes’ list than ever before. These include: Marialy Rivas of Chile with Blokes, Monica Lairana of Argentina with Rosa, Frida Kempf from Sweden with Micky Bader, and Marcia Faria from Brazil with Estacao. These women vie for best short film against their male competitors: French filmmaker Serge Avendikian and his 15 minute film Chienne d’Histoire which tops the Cannes short film list; Israel’s Yarden Karmin with First Aid; Australia’s Edward Housden with Muscles; Latvia (yes, Latvia!) with Jurgis Krasons’ To Swallow A Toad (the shortest of the short films entered - 10 minutes - but with the most entertaining name); and Cuba’s Pedro Pio Martin Perez with Maya.

Algeria is also present at the Short Film Corner with 3 short films says the newspaper Egalite (in French)

NFB Unveils Cannes Short Film Contest Finalists

  • Voting is opened for the sixth National Film Board of Canada’s Online Short Film Contest — Cannes 2010, with ten films vying for a spotlight at the famed film festival’s annual market.

This year’s finalist films, both animated and live-action, were selected by short-film expert Danny Lennon. They are:
· The Technician, by Simon-Olivier Fecteau (Canada)
· Love & Theft, by Andreas Hykade (Germany)
· The Story of My Life, by Pierre Ferriere (France)
· Crash! Bang! Wallow?, by Jon Dunleavy and Keith Wilson-Signer (United Kingdom)
· Mother of Many, by Emma Lazenby (United Kingdom)
· Forbidden Tree, by Banafsheh Modaressi (Iran)
· Annie Goes Boating, by Noel Paul (United States)
· Awake, by Thaid Dhi (Czech Republic)
· The Last Passenger, by Mounes Khammar (Algeria)
· The Report Card, by Alessandro Celli (Italy)
Voting is open now through May 17 at www.nfb.ca/cannes.
The festival is held in association with the Cannes Short Film Corner and YouTube. The ten finalists in last year’s contest recorded nearly 180,000 views.
The winning film will be announced during the Short Film Corner Happy Hour at Cannes on May 20, with the winning filmmaker receiving as a prize a digital camera/HD video camera and a laptop computer.

  • Iranian filmmaker Soheila Golestani’s White Situation has entered the Short Film Corner of the 2010 edition of the prestigious Cannes Film Festival.

The three-minute film addresses Iranian women’s issues with a cast of four actors and actresses, including Mohammad-Reza Farzad, Farahnaz Sharifi, Bahareh Riahi and Milad Movahhedi.

Organized by the Cannes International Film Festival, the Short Film Corner screens films from all over the world, as well as the ones participating in the festival’s Official Competition, Cinéfondation, Director’s Fortnight and Critic’s Week sections.

This year’s Cannes festival will also screen Certified Copy, directed by Iranian filmmaker Abbas Kiarostami and starring French actress Juliette Binoche.

The love story will compete in this year’s Cannes Film Festival for the Palme d’Or, the event’s top prize.

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Cannes is the word

May 11th, 2010

Forget about Greece and all the collapse in European economies, why tormenting yourself when there is Cannes 63rd edition  to look forward to ?

The next Short Film Corner will take place from May 12th to May 22nd 2010 and the whole world seems to be fretting about it. This years thematic programs are declined as follows:

cannes2010

Thematic programs
All films registered at the Short Film Corner will have the possibility to be selected in different programs. These programs will be highlighted in the Short Film Corner catalogue and on the interactive viewing screens. These programs will also have the possibility to be screened in one of the Marché du Film screening rooms. Films which are already part of another program cannot be selected again.

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Up north in Manchester

May 8th, 2010

kino

Hi All, just back from Manchester Kino short film festival at the invitation of John Wojowski the director of the event. John had kindly asked me to be part of one of their discussion panel entitled ‘It’s a short film, what did you expect?’ It was an interesting event, lively animated by Mat Archer and attended by accomplished filmmakers such as Bruno Coppola and Joseph Cahill.

During the discussion, we certainly touched various interesting topic such as how to come up with a creative idea, what strategy should you employ in making your short film, how to fund it and then what about distribution ?

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ShortsOD News round-up May 2010

May 3rd, 2010

Back online, apologies for the disruption of service, the site innovated some new technical features lately.

Our servers are now part of the cloud computing service of Amazon, this will enable ShortsOD to deliver all films more efficiently to you. Cloud computing is in effect one way of scaling the delivery of the content according to the activity on the site. For this ShortsOD needed to be installed on a robust backbone of servers throughout the world. The Distribute solution also required a large in-depth storage capacity. Furthermore, streaming films under flv format required ShortsoD to adopt the appropriate encoding tool that would be integrated within the cloud.

Amazon cloud computing services and Ankoder provided the right answer for this challenging change in the back-end of the site so here we go; ShortsOD now has a robust and efficient capacity to store, encode and stream or download short films around the world, all this is great news and was worth the wait.

Distribute.shortsod.com is in serious progress, although we will have to wait until 28/05/2010 for the launch date. Iam really excited to see it live as i strongly believe it will be a real service to filmmakers, so do keep in touch by registering here http://distribute.shortsod.com

Next post will be about the Manchester Kino festival where i saw very good shorts and met interesting filmmakers.

SoD

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News Round up

February 1st, 2010

At this time of the year there is a great focus on short films with the two major annual world events that are Clermont-Ferrand and Sundance festivals.
Of course Clermont-Ferrand remains the only dedicated event of important size that solely displays short films for an entire week. This year the 32nd festival of Clermont-Ferrand will host a selection of 400 films to be viewed by around 130,000 (!) spectators accross a dozen of theatres around town. Programmes run for 1h30 and the competition as usual is centered around International, National and Experimental.
Each year the festival welcomes a guest country and this time it is Morocco with a selection of films spanning 40 years of the country’s cinema history. The festival’s other theme this year is ‘Zombies, vampires and other living deads’ which promises good thrills to the amateurs with a selection of 30 films from 20 different countries.

The festival received around 6,25o films this year with an average duration of 20 minutes for the films selected by two panels, one of 12 people and another one of 8. The festival is also the occasion for short films professionals to meet at the film market and buy and sell short films programs. It is a unique festival and has been running for long so it is now a well oiled machine, if you are lucky enough to make it there you will be amazed by the fans and the atmosphere !

SoD

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News Round-Up

January 7th, 2010

Getting Short Shrift: Short films, which are highly popular elsewhere, struggle to impress moviegoers and producers in Vietnam.

Poste Restante, a short documentary by Marcela Lozinski has won the prestigious European Film Academy Short Film 2009 Award, you can watch a very short trailer here

Down under, those Aussies are already boasting of winning the Oscars with a string of serious short film contenders say TheAge.com.au
“our strongest hopes lie in short film. Luke Doolan’s Mir-acle Fish and Rene Hernandez’s The Ground Beneath have been named as semi-finalists for Best Live-Action Short, as has Eddie White and Ari Gibson’s The Cat Piano, in the animated category. All three films have previously won several awards worldwide.”

Great news: The Doorpost project 2010 is starting, check out all the entry details here

FILMMAKERS are being urged to come up with ideas for a new project.
South West Screen and the UK Film Council want to commission four films, with running times of no more than 10 minutes, at budgets of between £10,000 and £15,000.
All themes, styles and subjects will be considered — from animation to documentary — for the Digital Shorts project.
South West Screen executive producer Christopher Moll said: “We’re looking for ambitious, imaginative people who are enthusiastic about making a film.
“We want films that are provocative, idiosyncratic and audacious. We’re looking for filmmakers who want to harness the power of cinema to surprise, challenge and delight.”
Submissions should be made before Friday, January 22. For details, visit their website.

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Filmmakers’ interview: Si & Ad on Post-it Love and short films

January 4th, 2010

Whether across festivals or online if you’re short film lover you must have bumped into this delicious little gem ‘Post-i Love’ - For the last of our series of filmmakers interviews from the Brest festival i am delighted to introduce you the brilliant creators from Academy Films behind the short: Si & Ad - Enjoy !

siad

1 - About you

Where did you study filmmaking?

We studied Graphic Design and Maths respectively. Therefore we learn more about filmmaking on each and every shoot we do. We are still learning and always will.

Who are your heroes?
Our heroes are mostly footballers and family, but we guess you’re asking about film heroes. When it comes to film we like a wide range of directors from Wes Anderson and Spike Lee to Ray Harryhausen.

How long have you been pursuing the art of film making?
Almost a decade. Seems shorter.

How many films have you made ?
Two shorts (Post-it Love & Street Dream) Also lots of music videos and commercials.

What are you up to next?
We’re working on a screenplay for a feature, but that’s at an early stage - first draft.
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Goodbye 2009, hello 2010!

January 2nd, 2010

The New Year is a transition time, it is then that we are all inducing into the compulsory exercise of reviewing the past year and pondering the coming one. For me this time brings both a brief sentiment of nostalgia and and an exciting feeling of anticipation - So here we go, let’s celebrate the past year: Exceptional 2009 and not least because it has seen the birth of ShortsOD.

It took 2 years since the idea was roughly put on paper and pitched to the media agency Rassoodock UK for realisation and it happened on the back of closing down my first forage into international short films - Hurluberlu Films - From this first experience I grew stronger on the idea of ShortsOD. I have to thank the acclaim Hurluberlu Films received from the fans, the interest from films professionals from around the world in new media distribution and the hopes that new technology on the world wide web brings on day on day, from mass web casting such as YouTube to individual devices such as iPods and other smart phones.

In 2007, starting almost from scratch it was decided to build ShortsOD as a Video-on-Demand (VoD) platform solely dedicated to international short films. It also meant keeping the same values that Hurluberlu Films strive for: Welcoming accomplished filmmakers but also up-and-coming ones, showcasing for free a selection of the catalogue, promoting and reaching the most people online with the help of sub-titling, a tool that is also of great use to those who are hard of hearing. The only addition was to engineer a sustainable solution that would financially reward the copyright owners by integrating micro-payments to the core of the ShortsOD business model. This meant that ShortsOD would remain free of any advertising dependency and instead rely on revenue generated from rentals and purchases of short films.

In order to properly say goodbye to 2009 i want to thank you all who supported the site, whether it be short films professionals such as our distributors in Spain, Brazil and Iran, the filmmakers from France, the USA and UK, festivals programmers, the 500+ absolute visitors who came on the site in as little as 2 months and of course, our media developers whithout whom ShortsOD would never have started, thank you all! (I also want to thank my parents, my wife…etc and the list is long but then again i am not on stage receiving an award so i’ll stop here)

Now hello 2010 ! what have we got in store: Well let’s start with iDistribute, our online distribution suite for short films that i hope to see released very shortly. The idea as explained before is to give a chance to short films to be rented or sold online and the for the majority of the revenue to be redistributed to the copyright owner. While our agency is finishing up the application, i am still to complete on the pricing and model: it is a fine tuning between making iDistribute accessible to all and making revenue for the site to keep expanding. Recently i had a filmmaker wondering why no pricing information was mentioned anywhere on the site, i want to reiterate here that everything will transparent and published in due course when we release iDistribute.

I am hopeful that in 2010 i will strike the right balance between short filmmakers expectations and the fans appetite to finally give short films the opportunity to be more widely seen whilst helping the copyright owners to recoup their production costs. In the mean time, we have some tidy up to do on the site, like opening the free films to non-registered fans and making the registering process simpler with only a user name and login.

So bear with us while we get our act together, thanks for reading this blog and i wish you the best for 2010 !

SoD

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