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Upcoming events, Branchage to Fortnum

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Branchage review, Zipango Festival, BFI London Film Festival, Encounters and Fortnum 145.

Branchage

Here’s a chance to see a trailer of what you missed at the 2011 Branchage Festival in Jersey in late September.

Zipango Festival

You can re-live a little bit of Branchage at the forthcoming Zipangu Festival at Café Oto in Dalston, East London on Tuesday 22 November, where Bo Ningen re-perform their Branchage commissioned soundtrack to surreal anime CAT SOUP. Full details and tickets. All proceeds will go towards Japan disaster relief.

BFI London Film Festival

The BFI London Film Festival came to a successful close a couple of weeks ago. Congratulations to Festival Director Sandra Hebron for delivering another humdinger of a Festival, but which was her last Festival before ex-Sydney Film Festival director Clare Stewart takes over for 2012.

You can see a review of some of the shorts screening across the Festival by Dylan Cave in Sight & Sound.

It was also great to see a whole load of new British feature films directed by filmmakers with a strong background in short film:

Many of the above have screened at 8 years of the London Short Film Festival (born Halloween Short Film Festival back in 2004), and the 9th edition is upon us in early January; with 800 submissions from UK based filmmakers, which we’re currently in the process of viewing, we hope to discover those directors of the future that we’ll see on the world stage at a later date. Watch this space for full details in the coming weeks.

In the meantime, the UKs premiere international short film festivals is upon us.

Encounters Short Film Festival

Bristol, 16 – 20 November www.encounters-festival.org.uk

The Festival is the umbrella festival for Animated Encounters and Brief Encounters which together presents one of the world’s best-known showcases and meeting points for new and established international short film and animation talent.

There’s way too much happening across the festival to list here, but we’re excited to here that the Festival will have events with director Bruce Robinson (Withnail & I, The Rum Diary), cinematographer Brian Tufano (Trainspotting, Billy Elliot), and animator John Kricfalusi (Ren & Stimpy).

Fortnum 145

Official Campaign for those arrested at Fortnum & Mason

In other Festival news, we were distressed to hear of the arrest of Charlie Phillips from Sheffield Doc/Fest following the peaceful protest at Fortnum & Mason in March against tax avoidance and the cuts.

It was a peaceful protest, part of a day when hundreds of thousands of people exercised their democratic right to state their opposition to public sector cuts. 145 people were arrested, including Charlie.

Unbelievably there are now 29 going on trial, spread over three trials; the first trial starts next week. This will probably be the most high-profile one and will have a major impact on what happens to Charlie and the other 28.  The trial will be at Westminster Magistrates Court on Marylebone High Street and what happens in this first trial is very likely to influence the outcome of the other two trials, as well as the future of the right to peaceful protest in the UK. Your support would be very much appreciated!

There are various solidarity events going on, listed below - if you can’t make them yourself, then it would be amazing if you could spread the word about these events, and also contact your friends, family, your local MP, press contacts, and anyone else, to make sure they know that this trial is happening, and that it needs attention.

Information about all of this and other ways you can help is online at fortnum145.org

Event outside court

Thursday 10th Nov

On the first day of trial there’ll be a demo outside court with talks, workshops and music. More information on the Facebook event page.

Party / Fundraiser

Friday 25th Nov

Come to a party midway through the trial to celebrate activism and raise funds and awareness for this and other campaigns. It looks set to be a fantastic gig with a great line-up. Details are on  the Facebook event page.