Exhibition and Education E-bulletin
November 2009
Justin Kerrigan’s BAFTA Cymru award-winning I Know You Know heads to New York with the support of the Welsh Assembly Government, Wales Arts International and BAFTA East Coast.
Film Education Network member Cinetig and Ysgol Gymraeg Pwll Coch scoop award at prestigious Chicago International Children’s’ Film Festival
Film Agency funded and internationally acclaimed Sleep Furiously now available to buy on DVD
Forthcoming Welsh Titles: Mugabe and the White African
Dates for your Diary
Justin Kerrigan’s BAFTA Cymru award-winning I Know You Know heads to New York with the support of the Welsh Assembly Government, Wales Arts International and BAFTA East Coast.
Following an extremely well received screening of I Know You Know at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival in Washington earlier this year, BAFTA East Coast will be hosting a screening of the film on December 1st in New York for BAFTA members and selected guests, prior to its UK release early in 2010, and including a special Q&A with Director Justin Kerrigan and Chief Executive of the Film Agency, Pauline Burt.
The film premiered at the London Film Festival, and internationally at the Berlin Film Festival, before scooping Best Film at the 2009 BAFTA Cymru Awards.
I Know You Know follows Charlie (Robert Carlyle) who is highly charged and on the edge — an undercover agent, always on an important mission, always on the move. Jamie (Arron Fuller), his son, is fascinated by his father’s espionage work, until the world of spies becomes all too real. Charlie is unpredictable, explosive, yet kind hearted and fiercely protective of Jamie, who slowly begins to understand that his father may be occupying a quite different reality.
The Film Agency for Wales, as a co-financier of the film, is working with distributor Network Releasing to offer cinemas around Wales the opportunity to screen this BAFTA Cymru award-winning Welsh production upon its UK release. If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact Dan or Eve for further details. To find out more about I Know You Know, please visit the film website at: www.iknowyouknowmovie.com
Film Education Network member Cinetig and Ysgol Gymraeg Pwll Coch scoop award at prestigious Chicago International Children’s’ Film Festival
Animation company Cinetig have won 2nd prize in the Children’s Jury Prize category for the best Child Produced Short Film with their film Skool Daze, featuring pupils from Ysgol Gymraeg Pwll Coch in Cardiff.
Skool Daze competed among 265 films from 40 countries to win the award, a fantastic achievement showcasing the work of Welsh film education practitioners and young people on a world stage. Programming live action and animated features, shorts, TV series, documentaries, as well as child-produced works, the CICFF is one of the most unique festivals in the USA, showcasing the best in culturally diverse, non-violent, value affirming new cinema for children. The CICFF is also honored to be the only children's film festival selected to be an Academy Award® Qualifying Festival.
Cinetig animators Gerald Conn and Jane Hubbard, who directed and produced Skool Daze with the help of Ysgol Gymraeg Pwll Coch pupils, said: “We are delighted that our film Skool Daze has won an award in Chicago International Children’s Film Festival. This is the biggest showcase of films for children in the world and we had 3 films selected out of 200 in total. The film was funded by First Light Movies and Cinetig worked with a group of Year 5 pupils from a Welsh medium school, Ysgol Pwll Coch, from Cardiff. The film is about Maestir School, which is a typical Victorian School now situated in St Fagan’s Museum. The children, their teacher and head-teacher all dressed up and re-enacted a typical school day for a Victorian child in Wales.”
Cinetig have previously been awarded Education funding from the Film Agency for Wales for a series of film education projects, including Behind the Stone, The Travelling Harpists and Roman Remains. All these projects have involved teaching young people the fundamental principles of film literacy, whilst introducing them to a variety of animation techniques in the process of creating their own short films.
Pauline Burt, Chief Executive of the Film Agency commented “The Chicago International Children’s Film Festival is The CICFF is the largest annual festival of films for children in the world. It is therefore a fantastic achievement for all those involved in the project to be recognized with this award, and to profile their creative excellence internationally.”
Film Agency funded and internationally acclaimed Sleep Furiously now available to buy on DVD
New Wave Films is pleased to announce the DVD release of debut director Gideon Koppel’s acclaimed film Sleep Furiously, which was released in cinemas earlier this year to 5-star reviews, and rising to 5th in the box-office charts for its average per-screen audience.
Sleep Furiously became a critical discovery at the 2008 Edinburgh Film Festival, and then became one of the most critically acclaimed new British films of the year. It was described in the Independent on Sunday by Jonathan Romney as “sublime” and one of the signs of a British art cinema resurgence (along with HUNGER, and other New Wave releases UNRELATED and HELEN). Andrew O’Hagan called it “The most beautifully elemental documentary film to have emerged in Britain in over a decade… A reminder of the magic of Cinema” (Evening Standard).
The film is a meditative study of a small farming community in mid-Wales that observes the rhythms of country life, and the rhythms of the monthly visits of the mobile library. But it is a life that is changing – the village school is about to close, mechanisation is replacing many of the old ways, congregations are dwindling, but the village show and the sheepdog trials carry on. The film’s poetic observational style has been compared to the work of Humphrey Jennings, and Koppel’s interest in the eccentricities of life is simultaneously affectionate, moving and very funny. Sleep Furiously also features a mesmerising and atmospheric soundtrack from Aphex Twin.
The DVD special features include “A Sketchbook for The Library Van” - a 50 minute pilot for the film and the theatrical trailer. Full details of stockists are available at www.newwavefilms.co.uk/view-film-detail.html. If you are interested in stocking Sleep Furiously yourself, please contact Dena Blakeman at Dena@newwavefilms.co.uk
Forthcoming Welsh Titles: Mugabe and the White African
Film Agency supported Mugabe and the White African, winner of Best World feature at the American Film Institute’s Silverdocs Festival is now being touted by Screen Daily as a potential Oscar contender.
The film had its UK premiere at London Film Festival and has already been screened internationally at the Hotdocs Festival (Toronto) alongside Oscar qualifying screenings in NY and LA through Docuweeks and has been selected for Dinard and IDA (Amsterdam).
Mugabe and the White African documents the story of Michael Campbell and his family. Michael is one of the few hundred white farmers left in Zimbabwe since President Robert Mugabe began his violent land seizure program in 2000. Since then the country has descended into chaos, the economy brought to its knees by the reallocation of formerly white-owned farms to ZANU-PF friends and officials with no knowledge, experience or interest in farming. Mike, like hundreds of white farmers before him, has suffered years of multiple land invasions and violence at his farm.
In 2008, Mike, 75 years old and a grandfather - unable to call upon the protection of any Zimbabwean authorities and unable to even rely on the support of his fellow white farmers, all facing the same brutal intimidation - took the unprecedented step of challenging Robert Mugabe before the SADC (South African Development Community) international court, charging him and his government with racial discrimination and of violations of Human Rights.
This film is an intimate account of one family's astonishing bravery in the face of brutality, in a fight to protect their property, their livelihood and their country. The outcome of the court case potentially determining not just the future that lies ahead for Mike and his family, but the future of millions of ordinary Zimbabweans who continue to suffer at the hands of a dictator who, in setting his own countrymen against each other, has demonstrated that he cares only for power.
The Film Agency for Wales, as a co-financier of the film, is working with international sales agent Hanway to offer cinemas around Wales the opportunity to screen this BAFTA Cymru award-winning Welsh production upon its UK release. If you are interested in this opportunity, please contact Dan or Eve for further details. To find out more about Mugabe and the White African, please visit the film website at: www.mugabeandthewhiteafrican.com
Dates for your Diary
The next FAW project funding deadline for Festivals and Education applications is 5pm Friday 27th November. For more information about submissions contact hana@filmagencywales.com
The Film Agency for Wales is inviting appropriate organisations to nominate specific communities throughout Wales to collaborate with the Film Agency, Skillset Screen Academy Wales and partners in the delivery of a community based film education and exhibition programme to take place from September 2010 for a maximum of 3 years. For further information and proposal forms please contact hana@filmagencywales.com Proposals must be received by 5pm Friday 27th November.
Zoom – Wales’ International Young People’s Film Festival is now accepting entries for its 2010 Zoom Young Filmmakers Awards. Films must be produced by children/young people aged 25 or under, can cover the genres of Fiction, Animation, Music Video or Documentary, must have a running time of no longer than 10 minutes and must have been made in Wales after January 2008. For full details and submission forms, please contact info@zoomcymru.com The closing deadline for submissions is 15th January 2010.
The ICO is running an intensive Cultural Cinema Exhibition course 18th – 29th January 2010 (excluding weekend) at the BFI Southbank, London. The course offers a unique opportunity for people working in the cultural cinema exhibition sector who want to develop their skills, knowledge and understanding of film programming.
Taught by a wide range of experts working at the forefront of the film industry it covers:
- Introduction to distribution and exhibition
- Programming cinemas, film festivals, TV and non-theatrical venues
- Screening archive films, shorts and artists’ moving image
- Broadening audiences: young people, disability and cultural diversity
- Marketing and PR for specialised film
- Rights and formats
For more information see: www.independentcinemaoffice.org.uk/training-2010-culturalcinemaexhibition or contact Tilly Walnes at info@independentcinemaoffice.org.uk
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