Life’s a Breeze

Tweet

The inaugural Bingham Ray New Talent Award was given to Gerard Barrett by Bingham’s daughters, Annabel and Becca, for his film, Pilgrim Hill, which went on to many highly acclaimed festivals worldwide and secured a general release in cinemas earlier this year. The success also secured Gerard funding for his next three film projects from Film4.  

This year, the Galway Film Fleadh has nominated five rising stars in the fields of acting, direction, writing, producing and cinematography for the Bingham Ray New Talent Award. This year’s nominees are: actor Kelly Thornton for Life’s a Breeze, director Steph Green for Run & Jump, writer Ailbhe Keogan for Run & Jump, producer Emmet Fleming for Out of Here and cinematographer Eimear Ennis Graham for Cold.

The winner of the will be announced at the closing night awards ceremony in the Town Hall Theatre on Sunday, 14th July, 2013.

The 2013 Galway Film Fleadh takes place from Tuesday 9th July until Sunday 14th July and promises to be an unmissable event in the Irish social and film industry calendar. For further details and information, visit www.galwayfilmfleadh.com

movieScope movieScope - Movies From An Insider's Point Of View

Jesse Cleverly (L) & Miles Bullough (R)

Tweet

The company is adopting a portfolio approach to development – investing up to £10,000 into each of 50 new projects over the next three years, with follow-on investment available for projects that make a connection with an audience.

Wildseed has recently completed its first round of funding and has already invested in two projects. The first is an animated show for young adults based on the work of underground UK comic artist Ralph Kidson and features ‘God and Jesus’, where God explains his plans to Jesus for his latest miracle, ‘Animal Job Centre’ where an unemployed squirrel tries to navigate the vagaries of the job market, and ‘Serengeti’, where punchy and loutish animals launch into foul-mouthed tirades against each other at the slightest provocation. The second project is a live-action sci-fi/horror web series from 19-year-old creator Drew Casson – a 90 minute, special-effects-heavy horror/sci-fi coming-of-age story, shot vlog style, about a small English town being taken over by aliens. More projects are expected to be announced soon.

Wildseed describes itself as being platform neutral – putting great characters at the heart of everything it does and then looking to distribute projects to the platforms that best suit the idea. ‘A YouTube Channel will be a big part of what we do’ says co-founder and MD Miles Bullough, ‘but we are also working with creators who, for example, want to produce a mobile game first and that is really exciting for us where there is a great character at the heart of the game’.

Wildseed is planning its public launch for Autumn 2013 once its content pipeline is in full flow.

Targeting young adult audiences (13 to 35), Wildseed Studios is looking for ideas in four genres: Genre Fiction (Sci-Fi/horror/fantasy), Animated Sitcom, Character Comedy, and comedy for Kids 6-11 in both live action and animation. ‘We have also set aside 10 of our 50 potential investments for ‘Wildseed’s Wildseeds’ – ideas that don’t necessarily fit any of the above genres but that we love and want to get involved with anyway’, says co-founder and Creative Director, Jesse Cleverly.

Before setting up Wildseed Studios, Bullough spent nine years at Aardman as Head of Broadcast working on international and multi-platform brands such as Shaun The Sheep, Wallace and Gromit and Creature Comforts, as well as setting up Aardman’s Rights and Digital divisions. Prior to that he was MD at comedy indie Absolutely, which produced shows such as Trigger Happy TV, C4’s Armstrong & Miller, Stressed Eric and The Jack Docherty Show.

Cleverly has been running his own IP development company Connective Media for the past five years, working with a range of blue-chip clients. Prior to this he spent 10 years at the BBC in a range of editorial positions. He was trained as a script editor at BBC Films where he put the film Eastern Promises into development. He was then asked to join the team setting up BBC Fictionlab as Head of Development, exploring the new formats, new platforms and new technologies that would enable storytelling in the digital age. He finished his time at the BBC working as Head of Co-productions and Acquisitions at CBBC. Prior to the BBC he was Head of Marketing at the Royal Court Theatre for Stephen Daldry, where he commissioned the world’s first theatre website and launched 90 new plays.

‘Miles and I have spent the last nine months working on our business plan and fund-raising’ says Cleverly, ‘and we have found that there are lots of incredible creators out there who are making original engaging content with huge potential, but who lack the resources and experience to take what they do to the next level. We aim to be the company that enables them to develop into the next generation of entertainment trail blazers’.

‘We’ve also had a great reaction to our plans from established creators’, says Bullough. ‘Our proposition of not needing creative control, offering a meaningful share of back-end and moving fast and fearlessly has struck a chord with people who have great CV’s already but are interested in working a new way.’

Wildseed is focussing on low-cost production with its early pilots. ‘Neither we nor our creators make money from our early stage investments – it all goes into the projects’, says Bullough.

Wildseed is looking for its early stage investments to deliver finished content that can be put in front of audiences to gauge their reaction. Where that reaction is positive there will be with greater levels of follow on investment to create projects that break out and establish themselves on multiple platforms including TV, theatrical features and stage shows.

‘For our investment-funnel model to work’, says Bullough, ‘we need just one of our fifty investments to turn into a breakout hit. That feels achievable given our experience, our test and roll out methodology, and the amount of talent out there looking for investment and support. The key will be to create characters that the audience wants to be or be with and when we do, to be ready to exploit them across all media and all over the world.’

‘Working on our business idea, writing business plans, presenting, fund-raising and launching a start-up over the last nine months has been a thrilling experience’ says Bullough. ‘What has really been exciting though is the projects that we have been unearthing. Some of the people we are working with are at a turning point in their burgeoning careers we have been able to make a crucial contribution to what they do. This has already been as rewarding for us as anything we have ever been involved in professionally.’

www.wildseedstudios.com

movieScope movieScope - Movies From An Insider's Point Of View

Following the recent demise of Film Education a new nationwide programme of free film screenings and related activities for children aged five to 19 has been announced. Schools are invited to take part in free film screenings as part of £26 million investment in film education with the first National Youth Film Festival, which will run from 21 October – 8 November 2013.

Tweet

Building on the success of National Schools Film Week, which ran until 2012, the festival will be an annual celebration of film and cinema, enabling young people right across the UK to enjoy a wide variety of films and learn about filmmaking and the film industry. It is a key element of FILM NATION UK’s exciting new unified programme of film education funded by the BFI (British Film Institute). Cinema First will also be investing in, and working in collaboration with the National Youth Film Festival, which is to be delivered with the support of National Schools Partnership.

Along with screenings of a diverse array of films, young people from all walks of life will be able to immerse themselves in a host of activities to inspire a life-long passion for film, including interactive workshops about film and filmmaking, Q&A sessions with industry professionals, screenings of work by young filmmakers, awards ceremonies and more. Teaching resources and post screening discussions will enable teachers to use screenings for educational purposes to complement topics in the curriculum, develop review writing and critical skills, or teach pupils about film and filmmaking.

The new programme for watching, making and learning about film, of which the National Youth Film Festival is a key part, will be available to every child and school in the UK and will be delivered by FILM NATION UK, a new organisation, which will build on the work of two leading film education charities, FILMCLUB and First Light. The BFI is investing £26 million of Lottery funds over four years – the largest investment in film education ever seen in this country – so that every five to 19 year-old in the UK has the opportunity to receive film education. FILM NATION UK enjoys the additional support of the film industry through funding from Cinema First – the exhibitor and distributors’ industry body that values the role of film education in developing a new audience for cinema.

Mark Higham, Chief Executive, FILMCLUB, said; “We have been working with the industry to create the National Youth Film Festival because we want to begin a long-term relationship between young people and film. From the first film we ever see in the cinema to the larger-than-life characters we want to be or who seem to understand our growing pains, movies create some of our strongest childhood or teenage memories.”

For information on the National Youth Film Festival and to register interest in the programme go to www.nationalyouthfilmfestival.org

movieScope movieScope - Movies From An Insider's Point Of View

The Creative Industries in West Wales, the Valleys and North West Wales received a boost of £500,000 investment in training today as part of Creative Skillset Cymru’s Skills for the Digital Economy Programme.

Over 170 places on eight new subsidised courses will be available between June 2013 and April 2014. They will cover a range of skills areas including production management, hair & make-up, editing and business skills. The training will be run by top industry players including multi BAFTA award winning Morag Ross; Oscar winner Jan Archibald; and Iwan Roberts whose credits include Gavin and Stacey and Sherlock.

Since its launch in 2011, over 400 employees, freelancers and new entrants have benefited from the Skills for the Digital Economy programme. The £4.5 million industry-led training initiative is supported by investment from Creative Skillset, the European Social Fund through the Welsh Government, S4C and Teledwyr Annibynnol Cymru (TAC).

39-year-old Stephen Williams from Newcastle Emlyn attended a seven-month training programme in multiplatform production and management in January this year. He had over 15 years’ experience in the broadcast industry and realised that he needed to learn how to produce web-based material to move forward with his career.

Stephen is now using these skills working as a TV development producer with Welsh production company Dai4 films on a major documentary series that will be aired on Sky 1 next year. Stephen said, “It’s been life changing in terms of my future career as I can now go to companies and take my ideas forward.”

Rhidian Dafydd, Project Manager, Creative Skillset Cymru said, “It is vital that we continue to support the development of the Creative Industries and drive the skills agenda in Wales. I am delighted that we are able to build on the success of the programme to ensure our creative talent can grow and flourish by delivering new and exciting training.”

Further information on the courses and how to apply can be found at: www.creativeskillset.org/sfdectf and www.creativeskillset.org/sfdetvsf

movieScope movieScope - Movies From An Insider's Point Of View

The BFI Film Fund has announced support for two feature documentaries following its first ever pitching session held at, and in partnership with the UK’s leading documentary festival, Sheffield Doc/Fest.

Designed to make the BFI’s decision-making process more transparent for the benefit of the documentary filmmaking community, and in response to renewed industry and audience interest in the documentary form, the BFI held a pitching event at Doc/Fest in Sheffield on Saturday 15 June. Nearly 50 applications were shortlisted by a team of senior executives from the BFI and Doc/Fest, with eight projects selected to pitch for funding to an expert panel including representatives from the BFI, Picturehouse and SXSW Film.

Tweet

In line with the panel’s recommendations, and following further scrutiny through the BFI’s editorial process, the BFI Film Fund has committed to supporting two films:

Louise Osmond’s Dark Horse, which is produced by Judith Dawson and tells the inspirational true story of a group of friends from a working men’s club in a Welsh village who decided to take on the elite ‘sport of kings’ and breed themselves a racehorse.

Brian Hill’s Thomas Quick: The Making of a Serial Killer, produced by Katie Bailiff, which examines the compelling case of Thomas Quick, Sweden’s most notorious serial killer whose story shocked and haunted the Swedish nation for thirty years, but who may not be a killer at all.

The BFI has also committed to further engagement on Jerry Rothwell’s multi-textured “hippy heist” story of the mystics and mechanics who founded Greenpeace, How To Change the World, produced by Al Morrow, which was highly commended by the panel.

Ben Roberts, Director of the BFI Film Fund, said, “We are rabid fans of documentary at the Film Fund, and we hoped that throwing ourselves into the pitching events would energise our selection process and pinpoint those most cinematic stories. I’d say it exceeded our expectations in every way, and it was a privilege to hear passionate pitches from each of the eight teams. The strong standard of all the projects helped reinforce what an innovative and exciting form documentary can be, and that our filmmakers are truly world-class.”

Lizzie Francke, BFI Film Fund Senior Executive, said, “A documentary’s cinematic potential boils down to the three A’s: Authorship, Audience, Aesthetic. These qualities set documentaries of cinematic scale and ambition apart, ensuring that the films stand tall within the Film Fund’s portfolio and provide a legacy for the future within the BFI’s national archive. Dark Horse and Thomas Quick fulfilled the brief and both films promise a treat for audiences. We’re also pleased to commit to How To Change The World as the project progresses, and we congratulate all those who pitched and presented such a strong selection of projects, which made the final selection very difficult.”

Eight teams each presented a five minute pitch and took five minutes of questions from the panel to introduce their film’s story and characters, show clips of footage and demonstrate the project’s potential as cinematic documentary destined to be seen on the big screen.

The pitching event took place as part of Doc/Fest’s extensive industry programme and was open to an audience of industry delegates from the festival. The panel comprised Director of the BFI Film Fund, Ben Roberts and Senior Executive, Lizzie Francke; Producer of SXSW Film, Janet Pierson; and Director of Programming & Acquisitions at Picturehouse Cinemas & Picturehouse Entertainment, Clare Binns.

With expertise spanning development, production, distribution, sales, festival and cinema programming and exhibition, the panel gave feedback and advice to each of the teams before convening privately to decide which projects would be supported.

The teams chosen by the panel will receive a positive decision in principle and will be issued with a Letter of Intent from the BFI Film Fund, demonstrating the Film Fund’s commitment to invest, and endorsement of the project.

The move to a public forum is designed to bring greater transparency and insight into the BFI’s funding process and also to help benefit the documentary filmmaking community at large by showing what film industry experts look for when assessing a documentary’s theatrical potential. Working closely with Sheffield Doc/Fest, the BFI Film Fund will hold two such pitching sessions per year, with a second to take place later in 2013.

The documentary genre has been gathering pace at cinemas in recent years, and it is a form in which the UK excels. Homegrown films including Senna, The Imposter and Searching For Sugarman have won awards and critical acclaim and have also proved a hit with cinema audiences around the world. Due to renewed industry interest in the documentary form and following a sharp increase in applications for funding, the BFI Film Fund designed its new pitching events in recognition of the specialised consideration the genre requires, particularly for emerging talent, and to help illuminate the decision-making process behind the kinds of projects it is able to support.

movieScope movieScope - Movies From An Insider's Point Of View

Tweet

As iPhones and iPads become more and more a vital and integral part of every filmmaker’s kit, with its plethora of apps, and ability to even serve as principal camera on occasions, there is nothing worse than being on location and having the battery die. Unlike normal cameras, you can’t carry spare batteries and swap them out, and finding a spare power socket is not always convenient. However, Taiwanese electronics company Just Mobile have addressed that problem with their Gum Max Duo. This is a solid brick of a battery that resembles a portable hard drive. The sturdy aluminium case comes with black rubber protective sleeve (with optional primary-coloured ones available). The 11200mAh capacity battery has enough juice to give up to an extra seven hours of iPad use. The Duo designation comes from the two USB2 ports that will allow you to charge an iPhone and iPad at the same time. There are a bunch of LEDs to show the charging level.

The Gum Max Duo comes with a single USB charging cable, but no plug or cables for your iOS device. Having spare charging cables is always a good idea, and third-party Lightning cables can be picked up cheaply online from places such as eBay, Amazon or 7dayshop.com, as can USB plugs.

At €120, it is not cheap, but preventing your £500 iPhone or iPad from dying while you’re in the field makes it invaluable.

Visit the Just Mobile website to see their full range of accessories for all your Apple devices and to buy the Gum Max Duo.

movieScope movieScope - Movies From An Insider's Point Of View

Win a Rotolight RL48-IK-V2 Kit worth £299.99

movieScope, together with Rotolight – makers of advanced LED lighting systems for film and television – are offering one lucky filmmaker the opportunity of winning a Rotolight Interview Kit v2 - the most portable, professional, dual light source, colour calibrated LED location HD lighting kit on the market.

Enter this FREE competition by Paying With A Tweet!

Here’s How: All you need to do is ‘pay’ for your entry by tweeting this competition to your followers on Twitter or Facebook. Once you have tweeted by clicking the button below, you’ll be prompted to send us an email (the address is pre-formatted) Add the word ‘RotoLight’ to the subject heading and include your name/ address in the email body.

It’s that simple.

Just click the Pay With A Tweet link below to get started…

At the end of June, all entries will be collated and put into a magical hat from which will spring a tattooed white rabbit, hopefully bearing your email address. We’ll be in contact to send you your winnings shortly thereafter.

Competition Rules:
• Open to UK residents only (sorry)
• No Cash alternative
• Competition closes 30 June 2013

www.rotolight.com

Tweet

movieScope movieScope - Movies From An Insider's Point Of View

Steven Spielberg offered his support to the EU filmmakers at Cannes this year.

Ahead of the G8 Summit, European filmmakers have won the battle to have film excluded from the EU-US Trade Talks. At a meeting in Brussels, attended by the EU’s 27 Ministers of Commerce who are responsible for defining the content of trade negotiations to be opened between Europe and the United States, the ministers bowed to filmmakers’ pressure for the exclusion of culture and the audiovisual sector from the negotiations.

Tweet

Filmmakers from Central and Eastern Europe were particularly vocal as the region would be one of the hardest hit if the cultural exception was removed in the talks, with thousands of industry jobs at stake. Polish director and producer Dariusz Jablonski said, “This is great day for the European film community that we were able to make our politicians hear us. We thank especially France for their strong defense of culture in all of our countries. I know from that Poland and Hungary gave France strong support in this battle. We still have to be ready to express and defend our position. On behalf of those leading the protest I want to thank all those who signed the petition. “The cultural exception is non-negotiable!” petition was signed by over 8,300 people, with Americans Steven Spielberg and Harvey Weinstein giving their official support to the defense of cultural exception during this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

However, the war is not over despite this victory. EU Trade Commissioner Karel De Gucht, who has opposed the cultural exception, said that despite the decision he would be free to raise the issue again with European governments after sounding out U.S. officials on it. Should the matter be raised again, it would require a unanimous vote. French Trade Minister Nicole Bricq, who threatened to veto any mandate, speaking on the possibility of any revision to the mandate said, “The same procedure would then be necessary: France would again be asked to give its opinion, and would again say no”.

Watch the press conference that gives more details. Choose language by running the mouse over the video clip.

movieScope movieScope - Movies From An Insider's Point Of View

The Act of Killing

The 20th edition of Sheffield Doc/Fest drew to a close with its awards ceremony, presented by Jeremy Hardy. The seven awards for 2013 were: Inspiration Award; Special Jury Award, Sheffield Innovation Award, Sheffield Green Award, Sheffield Youth Jury Award, Sheffield Student Doc Award, the first ever Sheffield Short Doc Award and The Tim Hetherington Award presented by Dogwoof and Doc/Fest.

Tweet

Previously announced, Sheffield Doc/Fest’s Inspiration Award, now in its fourth year, went to BBC Storyille Editor Nick Fraser. Producer Simon Chinn said, “I can’t think of anyone more deserving of an award for inspiration than Nick Fraser. He has inspired me more than anyone I can think of to make documentaries, to believe documentaries can be the highest form of storytelling, and to be ambitious with them.”

 In accepting the award, Fraser said, “Docs – the great ones, I mean, but also docs in small pieces – have the ability to tell us things we don’t know. They’re also, in their own way, truthful. And they can have their own worldly beauty. Of course they must be worldly, coming from what we see, but the greatest docs are oddly innocent, too – as if they and we who watch them are seeing things for the first time”.

The Special Jury Award was awarded to The Act of Killing (Dir. Joshua Oppenheimer, Den/Nor/UK 2012, 158mins). A special mention went to Mothers (Xu Huijing, China 2013, 68mins)

The Sheffield Youth Jury Award went to God Loves Uganda (Dir. Roger Ross Williams, US 2013, 83mins). Youth jury spokesperson Curtis Holland said, “In 2013, kids are activists and revolutions are being started via social media. We had a long talk about what we young people think makes a good documentary and we decided that it is simply telling a good story and telling it well. There was one film that ticked all of these boxes. Delivering an important message, with humour, tact and humanity, one film stood out from the crowd. That film was, without a shadow of doubt, God Loves Uganda.

God Loves Uganda

The Sheffield Innovation Award was awarded to Alma, a Tale of Violence, (Dirs: Miquel Dewever-Plana  & Isabelle Fougère / Fr, 2012, 40 mins). Anna Higgs, spokesperson for the Innovation Jury said, “We’re at a really interesting time in understanding storytelling. We are beyond supporting innovation for the sake of innovation, it’s about recognising what audiences are doing and making work that builds on, and stretches that. 
We need to build sustainable models for digital storytelling. The work we liked developed techniques that other storytellers can learn from and use in their work. 
So for this reason we give the Innovation Jury award to Alma: A Tale of Violence.”

The Sheffield Green Award is awarded to Pandora’s Promise, (Dir. Robert Stone, USA 2012, 87 mins) with a special mention to Fuck For Forest (Dir. Michał Marczak, Germany 2012, 90mins)

. Jury spokespeople, Charlotte Cook & Rajendra Roy said, “If you believe fundamentally in the dangers of nuclear power [the winning film] encourages you to interrogate that view. Applying techniques more commonly found in left-wing polemic to a seemingly contradictory view, Pandora’s Promise is a great piece of filmmaking. It left us with questions and a desire to explore the issues more.”

Pandora’s Promise

The Student Doc Award was awarded to Boys (Dir. Marc Williamson, 2013 UK, 42 mins)

The Sheffield Short Doc Award went to Slomo (Dir. Josh Izenberg, US 2013 16 mins). Spokesperson for the Short Doc, Kate Trancard, said, “The Smalls is an online community of over 7,500 short filmmakers. We are delighted to be a partner of this year’s Sheffield Doc/Fest. We really believe in short-form filmmaking as a unique medium to tell a small story with big ideas. For us, this year’s winning short doc was exactly that.”

The new Tim Hetherington Award, presented by Dogwoof and Doc/Fest, 

is a new award that celebrates the life and legacy of photojournalist and humanitarian Tim Hetherington, whose objectives as a filmmaker were to highlight the plight of people so often ignored by the world and mainstream media. A cash-prize of £1,000 was presented to the film in the festival that best reflected Tim Hetherington’s legacy. The film was selected by a jury incluing Tim Hetherington’s mother Judith, and representatives from Doc/Fest and Dogwoof, the UK distributor of Tim’s Oscar-winning Restrepo. The Tim Hetherington Award was given to The Square (Al Midan) (Dir. Jehane Noujaim, Egypt/United States 2012, 90mins).

The EDA Award for Best Female-Director, awarded by the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, went to Rafae Solar Mama (Dirs. Mona Eldaief, Jehane Noujaim/ Jord/USA/Den/India, 76 mins). The jury included movieScope’s editor, Nikki Baugham.

Sheffield Doc/Fest Director Heather Croall

For the second year, the EDA Best Female-Directed award included a special award for outstanding achievement that was presented to Doc/Fest director Heather Croall. In receiving the award Heather said, “This week so many filmmakers have told me that their film first found traction at Sheffield Doc/Fest – either in MeetMarket, or as a germ of an idea at an informal conversation, or because they won one of the pitch competitions. Filmmakers often tell me their screenings at Sheffield lead to sales or new opportunities. Some have told me Sheffield changed their life! It is incredibly gratifying to me to know that Sheffield nurtures talent and makes a difference for filmmakers, not just during the festival but throughout the year. Thank you so much for this award, I like to see it as being for the Sheffield team as a whole.”

The Sheffield Doc/Fest Audience Award will be announced Tuesday 18 June.

movieScope movieScope - Movies From An Insider's Point Of View

Paul Andrew Williams’ Song For Marion

As part of a new relationship between British Council and SIFF, the Festival programme will include seven contemporary UK feature films: The Angel’s Share, Berberian Sound Studio, Shadow Dancer, Ginger & Rosa – all backed by the BFI Film Fund, Everyday, Song for Marion and Quartet. All the films will screen for the first time to Chinese audiences.

Tweet

The BFI’s recent highly acclaimed restorations of Hitchcock’s early silent films – the ‘Hitchcock 9’ – will also screen at SIFF. After hugely successful screenings around the world and screenings of The Lodger in Beijing and Xi’an, this is the first time that all nine films will be presented in China. Six of the restored films will be accompanied live by the celebrated UK-based pianist John Sweeney. A further screening of Blackmail will have its Asian premiere in the newly opened Shanghai Film Museum, with live music by Beijing-based electronic musicians FM3. In addition, BFI Senior Curator Robin Baker will give a lecture on the Hitchcock restoration programme.

A full delegation from the BFI, led by BFI CEO Amanda Nevill, and including Creative Director Heather Stewart and Head of International Isabel Davis, will attend the festival to meet Chinese counterparts. Looking ahead, a UK/China exchange programme in 2014 will see the largest ever retrospective of Chinese Cinema at BFI Southbank.

Other UK participation will include King’s Speech and Les Miserables director and BFI Board member Tom Hooper, who heads the Jury, and Helen Mirren, who will attend SIFF to present Hitchcock, in which she stars as the director’s wife Alma.

Two UK short filmmakers will attend SIFF supported by funds from the joint British Council/BFI Short Support Scheme; BAFTA-nominated The Voorman Problem and The Craftsman will both screen as part of ‘Mobile SIFF’, the Festival’s short film forum.

Despite a quota system limiting non-domestic titles in Chinese cinemas, UK film is increasingly celebrated by Chinese audiences. A recently announced joint venture between Pinewood Studios and venture with Seven Stars Media is also indicative of strengthening ties.

Briony Hanson, Director of Film at British Council, said, “It’s so exciting to be able to see such a positive UK presence in SIFF this year, following on from the groundwork the British Council has been doing to build audiences and interest in British arts. That the 2013 festival programme includes a selection of contemporary features, contribution from emerging talent and a celebration of one of our greatest ever filmmakers (given new life by the BFI’s restoration experts), is testament to the strength of our industry.”

Amanda Nevill, BFI CEO, said, ‘To see Chinese audiences embracing British film is thrilling and its fantastic that we are able to give what is one of the world’s most important cinema-going nations the opportunity to see both the best of British screen heritage and modern British filmmaking. Equally we recognize the importance and influence of Chinese cinematic heritage here in the UK and the BFI will be celebrating this with an extensive project planned for 2014. I hope these are just the beginnings of an even closer collaborative relationship between the UK and China.’

movieScope movieScope - Movies From An Insider's Point Of View