About Future Film BFI

Good afternoon one and all! It’s been a wee while since I last put anything up here, and I blame that completely on the hectic time we’ve been having here at the BFI!

Last month we hosted our 5th BFI Future Film Festival, with workshops, screenings, panel discussions and more! We welcomed Dexter Fletcher and Will Poulter to talk about the new feature Wild Bill, as well as a whole host of talent, ranging from the new BAFTA nominated filmmakers of Black Pond to old hands like and David Westhead, who hosted our Doc Next Pitching masterclass. This masterclass saw 30 young people learn how to sell their documentaries, before 6 finalists from our #FFPitch competition took to the stage to battle it out for a trip to one of our wonderful partners. Congratulations to Jaha Browne for getting that one – her pitch for a doc about England’s only Technology addiction rehab clinic was brilliant!

If you want to read a little more about the festival and our guests, why not check out Pai Takavarasha‘s interviews with Dexter Fletcher, Will Sharpe and Debs Paterson. Alternatively the young people over at Mouth that Roars made a short video documenting their time there – check it out!

We’ll be posting our very own documentary about the festival soon, with filmmakers from IdeasTap, Live Magazine and the Future Film Institute coming together under the direction and organisation of cinematographer Alex Nevill to film our events. More on that soon!

So, what else have we been up to I hear you ask. Noel Goodwin and I (Matthew Cuzner) went up to Glasgow Youth Film Festival just before the Future Film Festival, where we hosted another Pitching competition that saw two talented Glaswegians join the ranks of young people we’re jetting off to our partners soon!

We’ve also been busy planning away our Doc Next Network celebration day What’s Your Story?, which is tomorrow! (Saturday 17th March). We’re screening a programme of short films we’ve funded through the network, including some new, as yet unseen documentaries by the young people over at Exposure and Screen South. They’ll soon be up on the Vimeo channel, so keep an eye out over the next week.

Along with the programme of films, apparently a new Future Film regular, Mawaan Rizwan will be hosting a panel discussion on how to get your documentary made. We’ve got representatives from , Metropolis TV and Channel 4′s Commissioning editor for Battlefront! They’re going to be dishing out advice on the whole process, from finding an idea to distribution, so come on down!

Anything else? Well yes. We’ve also been down to IdeasTap, again with Dexter Fletcher and Will Poulter for another screening of Wild Bill. And we’ve been sourcing new Docs for the media collection – there’s a whole load in the cyber-post coming over to us, which will be up soon. And we’ve been planning our event on the 31st March for the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (Featuring a bunch of great short films, a panel discussion on the representation of LGBT characters on film and our wonderful LLGFF Young Reporters Academy. And we’ve been… well, you get the drift. We’ve been busy.

Good afternoon (morning or good night depending on when you read this)! For once this blog post has one subject, and one subject only; IDFA 2011!

We’re jetting two talented young filmmakers, Mawaan Rizwan and Alex Nevill off to take part in the IDFA academy, where they’ll get the chance to take part in workshops and discussions about film and in particular documentary!

Mawaan is a presenter for T4′s Battlefront, a campaigns TV show that provides young people with a platform to run a campaign about issues they feel strongly about. We chose Mawaan for several reasons, primarily because we find his online videos HILARIOUS. His work with Battlefront shows how committed he is to making a difference to the world around him and as a filmmaker he’s picked up several awards, including the Film London Best of Borough Audience Award for his film Jimmy Will Play, which is also being screened at our very own London Film Festival! Definitely a good choice we felt.

Our second participant is Alex Nevill. Alex has worked on quite a few short films and 3 feature films, both privately and professionally. We first came across Alex when he submitted his film King Cone to our very own BFI Future Film Festival in 2010, where it won the Best Documentary award. His CV is peppered with festival screenings and film awards, and his latest documentary ‘Launderette’ may even be screened at IDFA 2011! His cinematography is inspired, and he’s really impressed us with his last few films have blown us away, so we felt he would be the perfect candidate for the IDFA academy.

That’s pretty much it for this update, aside from saying we’re incredibly excited to be heading to Amsterdam in under a month, and we hope to see you there! Check out more information about the IDFA 2011 Participants and the Full IDFA 2011 programme!

Good afternoon!

We’ve (once again) got a lot going on at BFI Future Film at the moment, so I’m here to give a little update to all of you wonderful readers.

First and foremost, our Step2TV bursary winners have started filming, and we’re looking forwards to seeing the work they produce. Hopefully it’ll be as good as some of the previous work the bursary scheme’s have produced. On the note of bursary schemes, keep an eye on that link, as we’ll soon be uploading our first documentary bursary films, including the hilariously brilliant Baroque’n'Roll.

Submissions are nearly closed for our 5th Future Film Festival, so if you’ve got a film to submit, get a wiggle on! Entries will not be accepted after the 31st October! The programme is slowly being assembled for the festival itself on the 11th & 12th February 2012, so put some crosses next to the dates in your diary – you won’t want to be anywhere else!

What else is new in Future Film land? We’ve got the We The Peoples Film Festival – Young Filmmakers for Development Day coming up on the 19th November (I know, I know, it’s at the same time as IDFA, but if you can’t afford the flights to Amsterdam, swing by the BFI instead!) The programme for that is looking impressive, with two new feature films and many youth-made shorts being screened. We checked out one of the features at this year’s London Film Festival and it was brilliant, beautiful and heartwarming, so if you can do, definitely come along!

Don’t forget we’re also currently running a Twitter competition, in which 12 lucky finalists get a chance to pitch to a panel of experts at Encounters’ Fresh Flix festival in November. The final winner, chosen by the panellists, will then get an all-expenses paid trip to a workshop with one of our partner Hubs in Europe! Exciting! Check out more information here.

‘Is that everything?’ I hear you ask, and I reply ‘NO!’ We’ve got more.

There’s two girls doing work experience with us at the moment, and they’ve been watching LFF Press Screenings and writing reviews on them, which we’ve in turn been posting online to our Future Film Facebook page! So head on over there to check them out. They’ve seen some fantastic films, from Coriolanus to Friend Request Pending.

Our Four Lions screening with the Chris Morris Q&A was fantastic, thank you for asking, and highlights will soon be posted on our Facebook. We’ve also got big things in the pipeline with IdeasTap, so keep an eye out, and we’ll update you as we’re allowed.

We’re also heading to the 2011 London Screenwriters Festival this weekend which we’re all rather excited about! The programme looks jam-packed with good stuff so we’ll be updating you with what we learnt over the weekend in a couple of weeks.

That’s pretty much all for now, so I’d like to say So Long, Farewell, Auf Wiedersen, Goodnight. Adieu, Adiue, to you and you and you.

Good afternoon (morning or good night depending on when you read this)! Boy have I got a lot to squeeze into this wonderful little update. Let’s get straight to the point – IDFA 2011!

We’re jetting two talented young filmmakers, Mawaan Rizwan and Alex Nevill off to take part in the IDFA academy, where they’ll get the chance to take part in workshops and discussions about film and in particular documentary!

Mawaan is a presenter for T4′s Battlefront, a campaigns TV show that provides young people with a platform to run a campaign about issues they feel strongly about. We chose Mawaan for several reasons, primarily because we find his online videos HILARIOUS. His work with Battlefront shows how committed he is to making a difference to the world around him and as a filmmaker he’s picked up several awards, including the Film London Best of Borough Audience Award for his film Jimmy Will Play, which is also being screened at our very own London Film Festival! Definitely a good choice we felt.

Our second participant is Alex Nevill. Alex has worked on quite a few short films and 3 feature films, both privately and professionally. We first came across Alex when he submitted his film King Cone to our very own BFI Future Film Festival in 2010, where it won the Best Documentary award. His CV is peppered with festival screenings and film awards, and his latest documentary ‘Launderette’ may even be screened at IDFA 2011! His conematography is inspired, and he really

Check out more information about the IDFA 2011 Participants and the Full IDFA 2011 programme!

Hello again! We’ve had another busy couple of weeks (as if we ever don’t here at the BFI!), and we’ve got a few small and a couple of massive updates for you!

Since the last post we’ve chosen our Step2TV bursary winners and they spent a weekend with the Step2TV Mole getting training and advice on filmmaking. Check out the video of how they found it here. We’re currently developing a new bursary scheme that will see 6 talented winners travel to one of our EU partners for a filmmaking workshop, so watch this space!

We’ve had a series of Ken Loach masterclasses in a range of areas, from producing to acting and casting, cinematography to sound and editing. Barry Ackroyd gave some words of wisdom that really stuck with me: ‘Find your niche, get your signature, take everything you can and make it your own’.

So, what’s new that we’ve got lined up for you? Well… *Drumroll please* Submissions for the BFI Future Film Festival 2012 are now open! Hopefully this excites you as much as it excites us! Follow this link for more information on how to submit your film before October 31st!

We also have a screening of Four Lions on the 19th of October, accompanied by a Q&A with writer/director Chris Morris which should be good!

As always, for more information about our events and screenings head over to the BFI Future Film website.

Well what an exciting summer it’s been here at BFI Future Film! We’ve hosted our own D.I.Y. Sci-Fi Filmmaking course, as well as the National Youth Film Academy, with 6 short films being made in total, all of a phenomenal standard.

Our video Art bursary work is all completed and we’ve posted them all to our Vimeo Channel, so go and have a look! One of our young winners said “I think, hands down it is a fantastic opportunity, not only to produce a film with a little bit of money but also the mentoring. It was great experience and it was also fantastic seeing everyone else’s work develop too!”

On a similar note, we recently launched a new bursary with Step2TV. After the success of our previous bursary schemes, we’ve decided to create another Documentary bursary, with 4 places being offered for young filmmakers to receive a £500 budget, mentoring by an industry professional and entry into the Reality Capture Pitch with the chance to gain broadcast credits and a worldwide audience. The call-out for this amazing opportunity can be found here.

As you can see it’s been busy, busy, busy here, and the fun doesn’t stop yet. The BFI just had the press launch of the 55th BFI London Film Festival, and we at BFI Future Film are hosting a 2-day festival called Connect and Collaborate as a part of it all. As well as screening Better This World, we’ll be hosting Fever Pitch, a pitching competition which will see one talented young person win a £2000 production budget, professional kit loan and expert mentoring and on the Thursday we’re running a workshop on Collaborations with IdeasTap and a Networking for Beginners session (For more information on the events and to purchase tickets click here.