It’s five days since BIFF ended and today is the opening of the National Media Museum’s Widescreen Weekend – four-day extravaganza of films screened in their original formats, something the museum is able to do across the whole range and matched only by a couple of other venues in the world. 2013 is the 60th birthday … Continue reading
You have to admire the chutzpah of BIFF programmers Tom Vincent and Neil Young in starting their festival with Michael Winterbottom and finishing it with Mira Nair. They are two of my favourite directors but both are almost guaranteed to cause controversy or to produce films that critics write about negatively (which is important for … Continue reading
This was the winning film in the European Features competition at BIFF. I saw it in two parts, having to see the opening after I’d seen the rest of the film. I don’t think that this spoiled my enjoyment. The plot is relatively straightforward. Adele is a teenager living on a farm in a remote … Continue reading
Last year’s inaugural European Features Competition featured six films by debutant directors. This year there were another three first-timers plus three established filmmakers. Again the six films have not achieved UK distribution and Festival Director Tom Vincent told us at the award ceremony that this was the chief aim of the prize – to highlight … Continue reading
The title of this feature refers to the only sound frequency that one of the two deaf mute characters who form the central couple in the narrative can hear. I’ve read several reviews which name the precise sound that Nick can hear but I must have missed that. I spotted the moment when Evy remembered … Continue reading
I’ve watched quite a few of the shorts at BIFF this year, but most of them haven’t really caught my imagination. This one did. It has a genuine story – an incident with an outcome and recognisable characters. Esther Weary doesn’t enjoy her birthday, which falls on a schoolday that is also Halloween. She imagines … Continue reading
