Tag Archives: festival

Support Scalarama!

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I wanted to draw your attention to the upcoming Scalarama film season/festival, which will take place in September. The guys behind it have written a detailed manifesto about its aims, and they need to raise some funds (via Kickstarter) to make it a reality. Here’s just a snippet:

More than a festival, Scalarama is an inclusive film season, a movement for movie lovers and a celebration of cinema in all its forms.

We invite you to join a community of enthusiasts from across the UK; a range of film organisations, programmers, curators, collectives, academics, journalists and film fans – all will come together for one month to share their belief that watching a film as part of an audience is something important, valuable and worth championing. Scalarama is not just about film, it’s about the experience, and the people and the passion behind the projector.

Scalarama is open to all, whether you submit an event as part of our Open Programme, select to show one of the specially chosen titles from our Core Programme or take part in national Home Cinema Day on Sunday 29th September (see below for more details). Now in our third edition and with hundreds of events expected to take place across the country, we are on the verge of making a real impact on how people think and talk about cinema. With your support, we can make this year’s season the widest and most inclusive film event yet.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? For the full skinny (including video), and details on how to donate, visit the Scalarama Kickstarter page.

All being well, Permanent Plastic Helmet hopes to present an event at this year’s festival.

The 9th Annual Images of Black Women Festival | 3-11 May 2013

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I’ve been meaning to give this great festival some love for a while. As an introduction to what it’s all about, there’s little I can say that the official blurb can’t tell you with authority, so:

Images of Black Women (IBW) Film Festival has acted for nearly a decade as the only advocate for change in the representation of black women in film, presenting the global black experience with a focus on women in varied roles such as actresses, directors, screenwrites and producers.

Over the years IBW has supported upcoming filmmakers by providing visibility through its its Emerging Filmmaker Forum & helped short-film competition winners as Rungano Nyoni (Mwansa The Great) produce their next film projects. The Festival also premiered work from renowned directors such as the first black woman to win Best Director at Sundance 2012 Ava DuVernay, root-shaking documentary director Regina Kimbell for MY NAPPY ROOTS and welcomed international film icon Euzhan Palcy.

This year (2013) we will be at various venues across London with a special addition of free Art Exhibitions: Feminine Expressions & Representations.

For festival discount tickets & more sign up to our Nucinema mailing list

This year’s programme, spread across a host of London venues, looks fantastic, including such highlights as a screening of Dee Rees’ excellent Pariah, the UK Premiere of Ava DuVernay’s award-winning The Middle of Nowhere [pictured above], and Adopted I.D., a documentary screening as part of the BFI’s African Odysseys strand uncovering the extraordinary journey of Judith Craig, who was abandoned at birth and bravely returned to the impoverished nation of Haiti to find her parents.

Here’s the link for the festival website, and here’s the official festival trailer:

 

Film Africa 2011 announced

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Permanent Plastic Helmet, already beside itself with anticipation about the forthcoming 55th BFI London Film Festival, has received some more very exciting festival news.

In its first appearance since its inaugural event in December 2008, Film Africa, the London African Film Festival will return, taking place from the 3rd – 13th November 2011 in venues including Hackney Picturehouse, Brixton Ritzy, RichMix and SOAS. The festival programme will showcase more than 50 of Africa’s best films and 15 UK premieres, as well as a wide-ranging selection of Q&As, panel discussions and live performances.

Film Africa will open with the multi-award winning film Microphone, featuring a special presentation by the Egyptian actor, director and human rights activist Khaled Abol Naga and a live performance by Dele Sosimi and Dudu Sarr.

Other guests in attendance will include filmmakers and actors Zina Saro-Wiwa, Sarah Maldoror, Ariane Astrid Atodji, Dorylia Calmel, Sara Blecher and Kamauwa Ndung’u, all of whom will be present to talk to audiences during the festival.

As well as an exciting programme of African experimental film (which itself includes five premieres), there will be a special focus on Africa’s foremost women filmmakers. Sarah Maldoror – the first woman to make a feature film in Africa – will be in attendance to present her film Sambizanga and do a Q&A with audiences.

Other programme highlights include the inauguration of The Distribution Forum, featuring panellists who are committed to improving the distribution and exhibition of African film in the UK (Sunday 6 November, SOAS, free and open to the public); and The Silver Baobab Award for Best Short African Film, with EcoBank sponsoring a prize of £2000 for the winning film, to be presented by filmmaker Sarah Maldoror.

If that wasn’t already enough, there will also be live entertainment throughout the festival, with 9 nights of sounds from a host of London’s most exciting African-inspired musicians and DJs, including Grupo Lokito, the Krar Collective, Mashasha&Sam, Namvula Rennie, Bumi Thomas and DJs Rita Ray, Africathy, Volta 45 and Suga Kan’n.

In summing up the importance of the event, Film Africa Co-Director and Senior Lecturer in African Film at SOAS, Dr Lindiwe Dovey, says: ‘There has never been greater interest in African film, and Film Africa aims to celebrate and participate in this movement. A half-century after Africans started making their own films, supplanting the patronising iconographies evident in colonial cinema set in Africa, African Cinema is finally being recognised across the globe.’

It looks essential, and PPH can’t wait!

Visit the Film Africa website for more information.