LA Film Festival hits London

A prestigious Los Angeles film festival brought three award winning directors to Fulham for a screening at the London Film Academy last night.

The Angelus Student Film Festival is an international competition that recognises some of the best young filmmakers around the world.

Festival director Monika Moreno presented the selection from a festival which has seen academy award nominations for some of its entrants in the last three years.

She said: “We believe in stories that engage with human journeys and we want audiences to be involved in a unique way.”

Festival winners are whittled down from over 600 entries each year that are received from 128 different film schools from over 30 different countries.

Last night’s screenings included a showing of God of Love, written and directed by Luke Matheny, which won the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.

The $35,000 film centres on a love struck, lounge-singing darts champion whose prayers are answered when he receives a box of passion-inducing darts.

Mr Matheny, 34, said: “It is definitely the biggest student film festival and there are so many more cash awards.

“There’s a great team and we are pretty lucky when we get to come to London or go to the Sundance festival.”

In stark contrast to Mr Matheny’s 1960s inspired jazz comedy was the evening’s second film, Zac Petrillo’s documentary style drama set in LA.

Between the Shadows portrays the gritty life of one of Los Angeles’ 50,000 homeless people, a subject that holds a particular fascination for the New York director.

“The homeless world is something that has fascinated me and pained me for a number of years,” he said.

“To be able to screen with these incredible examples of student films is very rare. To even be able to be in London for eight days is great.”

The night’s final screening was Magellan, directed by Sebastian Davis, winner of the Mole-Richardson Production Excellence Award at the Angelus festival in 2009.

It focuses on the unrequited love of a schoolyard crush, a scenario that actually played out on set, with the child actors barely on speaking terms by the end of filming.

Mr Davis grew up in West Sussex before moving to Atlanta, Georgia, and praised the festival’s influence on him as a director.

“Angelus is fairly remarkable. It’s almost like being accepted into a secret society that absorbs you,” he said.

“I have so many friends that I hang out with and travel with because they’re Angelus winners from past years and it really is a wonderful shaping influence on young filmmakers.”

L to R: Monika Moreno, Sebastian Davis,
Luke Matheny, Anna MacDonald, Zac Petrillo

The screening was followed by a Q&A from students at the LFA and Joint Principal Anna MacDonald was delighted to welcome the festival to London.

“It was splendid. What they are trying to do is exactly what we want to do with our students here on the programme,” she said.

“We share the same passion for storytelling and commitment to supporting new and responsible filmmakers.”

The Angelus Student Film Festival continues to tour around the capital this week and calls for next year’s entries will open in January. 

RIVERS OF ICE

A new Himalayan exhibition is now open at the Royal Geographical Society in Kensington after being launched by a leading mountaineer and filmmaker. 

The Khumbu Glacier panorama (courtesy of GlacierWorks)

David Breashears, 56, has summitted Mount Everest five times and received four National Emmy Awards for achievements in filmmaking. 

Rivers Of Ice: Vanishing Glaciers of the Greater Himalaya uses breathtaking images taken over the past century to reveal the alarming loss of ice in the region.

The exhibition displays modern day photographs alongside several taken by Himalayan pioneers such as Major E.O. Wheeler and George Mallory, who famously perished on Everest.

Mr Breashears is Executive Director of exhibition organisers GlacierWorks, a non-profit organisation which has undertaken eight Himalayan expeditions since 2007 to raise awareness of the problem.

The American explorer opened the exhibit with a guest lecture last week in which he also presented detailed interactive photographs of the Himalaya, captured with state of the art technology.

Balti porters trekking in the Everest region
(Courtesy of GlacierWorks 2009)

Working with xRez Studio, pioneers in the field of gigapixel photography, hyper-detailed pictures were used to create panoramic images of the region, which can be interacted with online.

“Our project is about art, science and exploration and this technology is just a tool to get people interested in the region,” said Mr Breashears at the lecture.

“This is very compelling imagery that will make people want to learn so much more about their world.”

Audience members gasped as photographs were manipulated onscreen, with miles of terrain examined instantly in microscopic levels of detail.

The stunning panoramas were created through software developed in association with Microsoft and MIT and Mr Breashears claimed it is the future of teaching.

He said: “There will be so many layers of potential that people will be able to explore in so much detail.”

Historical images in the exhibition were taken from the RGS’s extensive collection of over 500,000 photographs, giving a new level of access to their archives.

Above: David Breashears and Mingmar Dorji Sherpa
(Courtesy of GlacierWorks 2007)

Below: Major O.E. Wheeler
(Courtesy of Royal Geographical Society)

Alasdair Macleod, Head of Enterprise and Resources at the RGS, said that the new technology can augment an audience’s appreciation of traditional imagery.

He said: “The technology greatly enhances our understanding of the landscape and breathes new life and relevance into those photographs taken nearly a century ago.

“As an educational tool, the opportunities are limitless.”

The exhibition is a transatlantic affair, with GlacierWorks working closely with Twickenham based company Sally Stiff Exhibition Design.

Designers Sally Smith and Edward Keeble collaborated with the RGS and GlacierWorks to create a suitable thematic backdrop for the dramatic photography.

Ms Smith said: “The structure tries to reflect the subject and we had to find a suitable way to try and display the photographs of the mountains.

“It replicates the different heights and slopes. We tried to build in the richness of the story into the whole exhibition.”

Mr Keeble added: “We actually created mountain like structures to show off the photographs.

“It’s a little bit like being in an actual mountain range. The stands are different heights, you turn corners and see different vistas and it’s very much reflective of the theme.”

Ice Pinnacles (Courtesy Jimmy Chin, 2007)

The exhibition is part of GlacierWorks’ efforts to promote awareness of the issue and encourage people to learn more about the problems of melting glacial ice.

The Greater Himalaya has almost 35,000 square kilometres of glacial coverage, the largest concentration of glaciers outside the polar ice sheets.

Seasonal glacial runoff supplies many of the major rivers in Asia, with the Ganges, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy and Yangtze rivers all fed by Himalayan glaciers.

But as thousands of these glaciers begin to melt, hundreds of millions of people who depend on these river systems for drinking water and irrigation could be disrupted.

Potential water shortages could threaten food supplies and as population pressures increase in the region, competition for water will be amplified.

Above: The East Rongbuk Glacier (Courtesy of Royal Geographical Society, 1921)

Below: The same location photographed in 2008 (Courtesy of GlacierWorks)

Glacial melting in the Himalayas is also indicative of the wider issues of global climate change, and GlacierWorks believe their project could inspire the next generation of geographical scientists.

Mr Breashears said: “We believe that letting people see the unseen will allow them to gain a serious appreciation of the subject.

“These are the people that we want to start studying the region and to start changing the world.”

Rivers of Ice continues at the RGS until Friday 11 November, is open Monday to Friday (10am-5pm) and entry is free.

For further information on the exhibition and the work conducted by GlacierWorks, visit www.glacierworks.org

Kick Off for London Festival

LONDON'S first ever football film festival kicked off yesterday at a star studded opening night in Belsize Park.

Kicking and Screening runs until the 29^th September at four Everyman cinemas across London and will show 17 different football features, shorts and documentaries.

Players, journalists and fans were present at the festival launch, which opened with a screening of 2006 documentary Once In A Lifetime:  The extraordinary story of the New York Cosmos.

Event organiser Grant Best brought the festival to London from its birthplace in New York and expects it to flourish.

“We’ve been delighted. It was a full house and everyone seemed to enjoy it,” he said.

“We’d love to do it again next year. We’d like to do some satellite festivals through the UK and if we can take it further afield we’d love to.

“If people want to come somewhere and enjoy football, film and film about football then that’s what we want to do.”

As guests arrived on the green carpet, they were treated to a display of Cosmos memorabilia and fabulous festival artwork, as well as the chance to mingle with some famous faces.

Former Arsenal defender Lee Dixon supported the event and highlighted the romance that cinema can bring to sport.

 

He said: “I think the fantasy element of film appeals to people and to see football in a cinema has a special air about it. That’s why I think this will be really successful.”

Sky Sports News anchor Charlotte Jackson also felt that this event was long overdue in the capital.

She said: “I jumped at the chance to come here. It’s about time there’s a football film festival.

“I think sporting cinema is a lot more nostalgic moving. People that might not be so interested in sport can get more involved in it.”

Spanish football journalist Guillem Balague, who will introduce the UK premiere of Cuando Fuimos Campeones on Tuesday, commended the idea.

He said: “It’s a great event. The whole thing is a very good idea and I can’t believe nobody’s done it before.

“Sports documentaries have a touch of reality at a time when so much is artificial.”

Sky Sports commentator Martin Tyler, whose son Adam has a short being screened at the festival, relished the evening and the upcoming football documentaries in particular. 

He said: “We all like the fiction films in theory but they’re very hard to put together.

“The drama that comes from real life sport is often better than anything you can come up with. When you’ve been close to the reality it’s lovely to see it on the screen.”

The festival continues at cinemas in Hampstead, Belsize Park, Baker Street and Islington until Friday.

  

For more information go to http://kickingandscreening.com/ or follow the festival on Twitter @KSFilmFest