The First Ever Russian Film Festival in London

The Academia Rossica and Apollo West End launched their Russian Film festival last night with a multi-screen showing of all 10 films of the festival. The festival continues till Wednesday 3rd with Sunday afternoon being reserved for a section of animation.

The animated film section includes the following films: My Love, Forgetful King, Zhiharka, Lavatory - Love Story, Foolish Girl, Kroshechka-Havroshechka and World Lullabies. The films have all been made over the last year by what Academia Rossica describes as a new generation of Russian animation artists many of who have won international awards.

So if it's still raining and you need something to do at 4pm on Sunday, head down to the Apollo West End for some Russian Animation.

http://www.academia-rossica.org/films_info/content/animation_programme/

Short Film Nights

Following yesterday's discovery of Straight8 and the discovery of Dime Films on Facebook/MySpace, I got wondering just how many other short amateur film nights there were?

So far I've found:
London
http://www.sleepnomore.net/shorts/

Brighton?
http://www.myspace.com/showreelsessions

and Cumbria
http://www.cumbriafilmmakers.co.uk/

Shooting People have a wide events list that includes some screenings
http://shootingpeople.org/calendar/index.php

Finally, a couple of short film links that are not related to film nights
http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/
http://www.britfilms.tv/

Flare's "One Across" premiering at Straight8 'Art' this Sunday

A good friend and old work college Richard Hare (aka Flare) is premiering his film this weekend out West in Chiswick with Straight8. His film "One Across" is about Carter Bridge, a very distinctive pedestrian/cycle bridge across the railway in Cambridge. Richard has been making films for some years now and I've seen his "Trigger Finger" film which was made with another ex-college of mine "John Aspinal" (no not the one who owns the zoo).

Is This Wisdom?: "One Across" premiering at Straight8 'Art'

Machinima Festival Europe

Next month De Montfort University in Leicester plays host to the Machima Festival Europe, a first for Europe.

The event runs for 3 days (12th-14th Oct) and will have workshops, debates, presentations and film screenings with of course an awards ceremony. The 3 days will be aimed at different levels, schools and students on the Friday, general and novices on Saturday with an expert day on the Sunday.
Speakers include:

• Paul Marino, Executive Director of the Academy of Machinima Arts and Sciences
• Hugh Hancock, Director of Strange Company
• Martyn Ware (founding member of Human League and Heaven 17)
• Visiting Professor and CEO of Sleepydog, Toby Moore
• Alex Chan, independent film-maker
• Ricard Gras, Creative Director of La-Interactiva

There will be a separate exhibition area and the student union will be providing drinks.
Machima Festival Europe
12 - 14 October 2007 De Montfort University Campus Centre Leicester, UK

More Film Distribution

Here's some tips about Film Distribution from Wild-Sound Film Making that I found via a friend of a friend on MySpace. I will definitely be applying some of the comments about the press kit / electronic press kit to the Flea Circus Film website. My cast biographies are a little light at the moment and I've don't have the more detailed synopsi yet but these are good ideas and I will endevour to apply them. There is however, the full script available for those who are interested. Full credits and the basic details like running time will also be added as I think that's a good idea too.

The comment on the distributors controlling the casting is interesting and reflects the issue that many film directors have that the distributors have too much control over such aspects of the film. Luc Besson commented a few months back how the distributors can completely kill a film by their bad choices. Voice actors are key to animation and to swap actors later in production although not impossible can add significant extra effort to the animation and film editing and could fundamentally change the character of a film.

I have seen animated films where they were successfully voiced in multiple languages; Terkel in Trouble for example; but it was almost a year after the Danish release that we saw this in British dubbed version cinemas. The lipsync would likely need to be redone following a change of actors. It helps with the Flea Circus that there are no lips on the fleas (and that the fleas are invisible) so the Flea Actors can be changed if necessary but I would strongly resist such a change. I have contemplated having other languages or subtitles on the film and have been investigating how this can be added to a DVD.

The actors/distributors issue further re-enforces my thoughts that the Flea Circus Film will have to be independently distributed via the internet.