Guest blog by @KayLinaBrown
Did you know that we miss out on some of the greatest films through no fault of our own?
For someone who works for a film festival, I miss a lot of films I want to see when they’re in the cinema. I rarely see them on the big screen when I know I should, because of this I’m probably around 3 years (at least) behind the rest of the film team. I’m lulled into a false sense of security as I can add them to my Amazon wish list (or at least get a notification for when I can add it to my wish list) and pre-order them from Love Film at the same time they’re released in the cinemas.
However, there is one time of year when I know I should make an effort to see films in the city, and it just so happens it’s when I’m working the most, during the film festival. If there is one thing I’ve learnt from my colleagues, it is that there is an amazing amount of great films that we rarely have the opportunity to see on the big screen; whether it’s because they haven’t secured distribution, because the distributors have decided to send it straight to DVD or because of a multitude of other factors.
A great example of a film that is still waiting for release is last year’s Leeds International Film Festival Audience Award winner, High on Hope, a documentary telling the story of the acid house movement. The documentary makers are currently trying to raise £30,000 to clear the music rights so that the film can be released. You can currently donate various sums to the film through its official website for rewards such as an invitation to a private screening of the film and your name in the credits at the end of the film.
The Film Festival has been a champion of great unseen cinema for many years and introduced the Golden Owl Competition in 2004. The Golden Owl Competition showcases 10-15 new feature films from across the world, all UK premieres, which are all made by non-established directors and those who have not had their films distributed before. The competition is designed to provoke debate surrounding the distribution of feature films in the UK, as many of us assume that we are seeing the greatest films available to distributors when in reality there are still hundreds (if not thousands) of others we don’t see that are equally as magnificent, or more so, than those being released.
This year’s Golden Owl Competition films include Koen Mortier’s 22nd of May which ricochets from realist drama to taut thriller to dreamlike surreal fantasy; Fuerteventura, a fascinating psychological drama probing meditation on grief, intimacy and identity; The Gravedigger, a bold innovation in cinematic narrative technique; Heat Wave, a simmering drama intersecting lives all taking place one sweltering afternoon somewhere on the edge of Marseilles, France; Nana which tells story almost exclusively through the eyes and words of a four-year-old child; The Other Side of Sleep which takes the small town murder story and subjects it to dreamlike metamorphosis; The Prize, a subtle and political drama; Summer of Goliath, a blend of documentary and fiction that bends generic expectations at every turn; and Toomelah, a tough and uncompromising portrait of a remote Aboriginal community featuring non-professional actors.
It’s not just feature films that miss out on distribution, there’s a large selection of documentaries and short films that are near on impossible to see outside of the film festival environment. The Substance – Albert Hoffman’s LSD is one such documentary I’ll be trying to see this year; a fascinating, eye opening history of LSD which provides an enlightening journey through the innovations and contradictions of the late twentieth century. The molecule has a powerful impact beyond the scientific world and the documentary explores it’s appropriation by counter culture and the military as well as it’s intended psychiatric purposes. For homegrown talent I’ll be aiming to explore an outstanding selection of short films in the Yorkshire Short Film competition, from a film about local institution to a subtle drama, it’ll be great to be reminded about the terrific talent on our doorstep.
For more information about the Leeds International Film Festival visit www.leedsfilm.com