Super excited that Valentine has another UK screening, this time at newly BAFTA-qualifying Aesthetica film festival in York, November 6-9th. Showcasing 300 short films from 40 countries world wide.
Valentine is playing across the festival weekend in comedy block 6 and in nominated for Best Comedy. Results will be announced during the festival.
This September I spent the month in a race to make the top three to be judged by Head of Warp Films Robin Gutch.
Robin and Warp Films are the production company behind great British movies like This Is England, Four Lions, Submarine and Kill List.
We were voted through to the final by ShootingPeople members and today I got the results that Robin had picked my short as the winner.
He said about the film, “A successful short film that unified tone, story and theme in an entertaining way.”
Hooray!
I am very excited to say that I am one of the 25 filmmakers selected for this years Think-Shoot-Distribute film lab at the BFI London Film Festival with my debut feature film.
Think-Shoot-Distribute 2013 is the LFF’s highly regarded talent development scheme in which 25 writers, directors and producers are selected to take part in a five-day training programme where they will meet leading international filmmakers and executives to explore all areas of making feature films and the industry. Participants will examine their feature film project with course leaders and industry guests during the training week.
Super psyched to say that Valentine has got itself another festival screening, this time at 22nd Raindance film festival.
Raindance presents films and web series from around the world, celebrating and supporting independent, new and alternative filmmakers. They premiered low budget features such as Memento, Old Boy, The Blair Witch Project, Ghost World and Love Exposure.
The festival is taking place this year from the 24th September – 5th October 2014 in central London (Piccadilly Circus), screening 100 feature films and over 150 short films.
Valentine will be screening twice before the feature film, Hinterland, on Saturday 27th September and Tuesday 30th November.
Check out our festival page HERE.
I was asked by the team at Ty Newydd in Wales if I might come speak at Screenwriters lab residental they were holding about my experience making short films and any advice I could give to their selected writers on approaching their own short work.
The residential was at the Tŷ Newydd Writers’ Centre for experienced Welsh language writers of theatre, film and TV led by Literature Wales, Y Labordy was a unique opportunity for four experienced and aspiring writers to develop their ideas alongside some of the most respected scriptwriters and producers in their industry.
Other speakers included film experts Mary-Kate and Rachel O’Flanagan, director Kieran Evans, Mad Men producer/writer Lisa Albert, and Jeppe Gjervig Gram, writer of Borgen.
You can read about writer Fflur Dafydd's experience on the Creative Skillset website HERE
Just found out that VALENTINE has been nominated at BornShorts Film Festival for Best Narrative Short. BornShorts takes place annually on the Baltic island of Bornholm, Denmark.
Our screening is on Saturday 13th September at 14:30. Check IT
Very excited to announce that I have been selected for the 2013-14 LOCO London Comedy Film Festival with Sky Comedy mentoring scheme for my latest short film, Rest Stop.
Only three films were selected for development by the commissioning team at Sky Comedy and supported by Creative Skillset and the BFI. Our team was picked by Sky Comedy's Commissioning Editor Saskia Schuster.
The scheme is supported by Creative Skillset, which is funded by the National Lottery via the BFI and through the Skills Investment Fund.
The programme, which begins in July 2013, will give the filmmaker teams close access to industry experts working in comedy to help them further their careers and develop a short comedy film. Each selected team contains a writer, director and producer:
LOCO will support each team by facilitating three development sessions with Sky’s comedy commissioning team and five tailor-made meetings with additional industry experts.
LOCO aims to help comedy filmmakers here in the UK develop the skills, relationships and original ideas that will launch them onto a lifelong career. Sky has commissioned some of the most exciting new comedies of the past few years, so I am very excited to have both these fantastic organisations helping me with Rest Stop.
Dan Simmons, Head of Film at Creative Skillset said, “Creative Skillset supported LOCO’s training during the festival in January, where participants had invaluable access to a large number of industry professionals. The fantastic mentoring opportunities now available are rare, taking the most promising comedy talent and their projects to the next level of their careers.
Saskia Schuster, Commissioning Editor, Comedy at Sky, said “I am thrilled to be on board with LOCO for this exciting programme. It can be tricky and sometimes daunting for emerging comedy writers to go from an initial idea to a first draft script and eventually to the first day of filming. I hope that alongside the other mentors, we can make the process a little easier and have some fun along the way.”
Excited and honored to announce that VALENTINE will be having it's NORTH AMERICAN PREMEIRE at BAFTA and Oscar-qualifying Palm Springs International ShortsFest at their 20th anniversary.
The festival takes place in June and screens 350 short films from over the world along with hosting a Short Film Market with over 3,000 short films. An AMPAS qualifying Festival, PSISF has hosted 97 short films in its 19-year history that went on to secure Oscar nominations in the short film categories.
Completely ecstatic that Valentine will be screening in the Gay-La HERS: Lesbianation screening on Thursday 19th June. Check out our film page for Valentine on Palm Springs website HERE.
We were also featured by the Festival Director, Kathleen McInnis, in a video for The Desert Sun on festival highlights to check out HERE.
Thrilled to announce that we have now cast their two leads in my short film Rest Stop. The leads will be played by BAFTA-winning actor Ben Willbond (Horrible Histories, Yonderland, The Thick of It) and Canadian actress Cari Leslie, an alumna of Amsterdam’s acclaimed live comedy show Boom Chicago.
Rest Stop follows Meredith, a Canadian backpacker who finds herself cajoled into believing that a British man she meets in an M3 service station is her Guardian Angel.
Our team has been mentored on the development of our project by Jonathan Wakeham, co-founder of LOCO and Saskia Schuster, Commissioning Editor for comedy at Sky, who has exec produced shows including Yonderland and Little Crackers Series 2 & 3.
We start shooting in the next two weeks in London.
BEN WILLBOND
Ben first came to prominence as one half of ‘Ben and Arn’, winning the Perrier Best Newcomer Award for The Ben ‘n’ Arn Show at the Edinburgh Festival in 1998. He has since appeared in all five series of the award-winning CBBC series Horrible Histories, which long list of awards includes five BAFTAs, a 2011 Broadcast Award and Best Sketch Show at The British Comedy Awards in both 2010 and 2011. With the team from Horrible Histories, Ben then went on to co-write and star in family adventure fantasy Yonderland for Sky 1.
After appearing as ‘Adam Kenyon’ in a one-off episode in Series 2 of The Thick Of It (BBC2), Ben returned as the same character in a main role in Series 4. 2008 saw Ben star alongside co-writers Laura Solon and Marek Larwod in Laura, Ben and Him, their acclaimed multi-character sketch show for ITV2. Other TV appearances include series one and two of Rev (BBC2), Extras (BBC1), Lead Balloon (BBC2), The Catherine Tate Show (BBC2) and Black Books (Channel 4).
Ben co-wrote, co-produced and co-starred in the LOCO Discovery Award-winning short film Tooty’s Wedding, which in 2011 won the LA Shorts Film Festival Award for Best Short, the Grand Jury Prize for Best Comedy at the Rhode Island Film Festival and the Best Foreign Film and Best Director awards at the LA Comedy Festival. In 2012 it screened at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah and the inaugural Sundance London, and was nominated for the Sundance Shorts Award.
Most recently he has co-written the feature film BILL which is currently in production with BBC Films, in which he will star alongside the cast from Horrible Histories and Yonderland. Ben’s other film roles include Your Highness, Cemetery Junction, Starter For Ten, I Want Candy, Click and St Trinian’s.
CARI LESLIE
Cari Leslie is an actor and improvisor currently based out of Amsterdam. Originally from Ottawa, Canada, Cari hosted three seasons of the children’s educational television series, A World of Wonders, taking her to 28 different countries, and which was nominated for Best Children’s or Youth TV Program or Series at the Gemini Awards (now the Canadian Screen Awards) in 2010. In 2011, Cari moved to Amsterdam to join the cast of Boom Chicago, performing improv and sketch comedy nightly to international audiences.
Before the move, Cari was active in the Canadian improv scene, co-founding Crush Improv, an Ottawa-based longform improv troupe, as well as performing in various festivals around the country and volunteering with the Canadian Improv Games, a national high school improv tournament. She also spent a couple of summers performing outdoor Shakespeare in parks around Ottawa with A Company of Fools, playing Enobarbus/Pompey in Antony and Cleopatra, and Puck/Egeus in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
