Branchage Film Festival Blog

Aesthetica Short Film Festival

2011-10-06T19:08:00.000+01:00

It's always nice to hear about a new festival on the block offering something a bit different and the upcoming inaugural Aesthetica Short Film Festival (ASFF) promises to be a pretty special celebration of short film, with 150 shorts (docs, fiction, animation, music video, artists' film...) being screened from 30 countries. But what's really lovely about it is the setting - these shorts will be shown in historic venues around York. A festival after our own hearts, ASFF will use 15 different locations around the city, so the discerning attendee can explore York's medieval halls, historic buildings and contemporary art spaces as they watch. Lovely, lovely, York-y short film greatness.

There's a good selection of Masterclasses taking place during the festival too, including sessions with Ivana MacKinnon (associate producer of Slumdog Millionaire) and screenwriter Mark Hermann (The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, Brassed Off, Little Voice).

As for the selection of films themselves... we really shouldn't play favourites, we know, but a quick scan of the very full programme throws up some great films that you might have missed at this year's Branchage, so do look out for INERTIA (Todd MacDonald), NOAH'S ARK (Sam Meech), THE HOLIDAY (Ida Akesson), SILENT THINGS (Rob Brown), JOIN THE DOTS (Jessica Lux), PARIS/SEXY (Ruth Paxton), ORRIBLE (Giles Ripley), COTE D'AZUR (Caroline Ward), WAR DANCE (Ed Edwards), and also here's a shout for the very funny THE MAESTRO (Chris & Ben Blaine), which we haven't screened, but have very much enjoyed.

'Paris/Sexy' Ruth Paxton

'Inertia' Todd MacDonald

Aesthetica Short Film Festival takes place 3rd to 6th November 2011. The festival organisers say 'Explore York. Experience Film.' We say 'Yes, okay, that sounds pretty special'.

www.asff.co.uk

Where are we blogging at?

2011-09-09T08:27:00.000+01:00

Missing the news on our blog?
We're updating the News page of our snazzy new website, so head HERE to check out what we're up to.

x

Get back to your Grassroots

2011-07-14T13:35:00.004+01:00

WIN A PAIR OF TICKETS TO GRASSROOTS JERSEY!

Only 8 days to go until Grassroots festival transforms the Val de la Mare dam into a lovely Eco Friendly one-day music festival with all the little extras that make Grassroots gorgeous - like amazing Jersey Pottery global streetfood for sale. And twice the normal number of bars...

Natch, Branchage will be going, hanging in the eco village, crunking in the favela funk dance arena, swapping our recycling for drinks tickets. Chilling out, maxing, relaxing... the usual.

Headlining this year is the Blues man whose voice hits you where it hurts, Seasick Steve, with Arrested Development second on the bill - oh to hear Everyday People in late Jersey sunshine, yes!

Also on the line-up, Easy Star All-stars, Backbeat Soundsystem, Mat McHugh, Ben Howard, Josh Flowers, Rick Jones, and DJing in the dance arena, Bag Raiders, Brad Baloo, Mr Bongo Soundsystem and The Uplifter.

To get you in the mood for the main event, here's one of Seasick Steve's many Jools Holland live performances...

ENTER OUR TICKET COMPETITION!

Win a pair of tickets for Grassroots Festival 2011 on 23rd July by answering this question:

"Grassroots takes place at Val de la Mare reservoir. Which classic 1978 film did Branchage screen down at the dam last year?" (Clue: it was neither a bird nor a plane.)

Email info@branchagefestival.com with your answer in the subject line. A winner will be drawn at random on Monday morning and the tickets will be posted out to you in time for the festival.

See you there!

A weekend of documentary delight - Doc/Fest 2011

2011-06-23T15:46:00.001+01:00

Before the memories of Sheffield's tremendous festival of documentary films - Doc/Fest 2011 - fade, here's our run down of the event and some of the great films we saw, and it was all watched over by the godfather of documentary filmmaking, the mighty Albert Maysles.

Bad photo of Albert Maysles. Disclaimer: photographer was too in awe to get closer.

Maysles (who made seminal 'Cinema Verite' films with his late brother David, including Gimme Shelter [shown at Branchage 2008], and Grey Gardens), was at Doc/Fest to accept a Lifetime Achievement Award, give a masterclass and introduce a few of his films. Despite being made in 1968, Maysles' Salesman shone out as one of the greatest films in the festival. This portrait of door-to-door Bible salesmen travelling across America in the late 60s is as touching, funny, eloquent, honest and endearing as it is revealing, in its subtle capturing of a time and a place.

We also caught a few early screenings of soon-to-be-released films to watch out for. First up, Life In A Day - a composite of footage of 'everyday life' filmed by the good people of planet Earth on July 24th 2010. Director Kevin Macdonald is a versatile kinda guy - he's won BAFTAs for both docs (Touching The Void) and fiction (Last King Of Scotland), as well as an Oscar for the astonishing One Day In September. Regardless of the type of film he's making, they're always stunning because he really knows how to shape a story and keep the audience enthralled. Life In A Day is no exception - and it's hardly surprising that it runs you through the gamut of human emotion, as it's a film about human lives - the little things, the big things, the mundanities, the tragedies, the sinister, and the loving - all around the world. (Well, around most of the world, but the limits to the footage they got in are more than understandable).

Next, already in cinemas, and highly recommended, Asif Kapadia's extraordinary bio-pic of Formula One driver and Brazillian national hero Ayrton Senna. Senna's magnetic charisma and passion for driving, for his religion, and for life makes his story utterly captivating. Lovers of Formula One should be frothing at the mouth with the glut of race footage in this film, but people who associate F1 with blaring tellies to be avoided on Sunday afternoons (yup, hi, right here) will be equally charmed and mesmerised by the man and by the film.

Strangely enough Calvet also traces the life story of one charismatic, larger-than-life man, but this one was a runaway, gangster's body guard and addict, running his life into the ground, until at his very lowest point - locked in a house in Nicaragua on a three month diet of drugs and paranoia - he discovered that he could purge himself of his torments by painting. There's a long way to go from that point to the man we meet in the film, retracing the crucial moments of his life across the globe and trying to hunt down his long-abandoned son. It's impossible to look away from Calvet and the film, like the man, is fast-paced, brutal in its honesty, colourful and surprisingly sensitive for something that feels so brash.

Another big film at Doc/Fest coming to a screen near you (in August) was Project Nim - again, in a way, a portrait of the life of a man. Except of course Nim isn't a man, he's a chimpanzee, who was raised like a human child as part of a 'scientific' experiment to see if chimps could be taught to use (sign) language to communicate with humans. Well, it's a bit like science, except shockingly irresponsible and ill-advised from start to finish. Nim's story is a tragedy - and Oscar-winning director James Marsh's handling of the chimp's life tale is probably one of the most humane treatments Nim ever received.

Last but not least, a shout out for Just Do It: A Tale Of Modern Day Outlaws. Clearly a film that was challenging to make from start to finish, it's a rare look behind the scenes at activist groups like Climate Camp and Plane Stupid, following them through their clandestine planning sessions to their surprisingly well organised direct action attacks. Don't go to this film to if you're looking to find a discussion about whether activism is an effective way to deal with climate change, but definitely watch it to see some properly passionate people who are fed up with feeling impotent in the face of global problems, and so take matters into their own hands. The surprising meat in this story isn't so much about young 'uns chaining themselves to railings and breaking into power stations (impressive as that is), but about police powers to silence the dissenting voice - hair-raising to say the least.

Brilliant festival, run seamlessly, thanks in no small part to the lovely atmosphere fostered throughout and Doc/Fest's legion of wonderful volunteers.

Win tickets to MAN ON WIRE at Open City London

2011-06-13T16:21:00.002+01:00

There are hundreds (literally) of documentaries to watch this weekend at Open City London Documentary Festival. The programme of films is stunning, covering a massive range of non-fiction titles and featuring appearances and screenings from giants of documentary filmmaking like Christi Puiu, Penny Woolcock and Pawel Pawlikowski.

WIN TICKETS TO MAN ON WIRE
1pm, Thursday 16th June, at UCL's Darwin Theatre

The very first screening of the very first Branchage Film Festival was Man On Wire. The film went on to win an Oscar, and it holds a special place in our hearts. A dramatic and arresting mixture of reconstruction and original footage, the film recounts Philippe Petit's 1974 wire walk between the Twin Towers, 1350 feet above New York. Man On Wire feels like more of a heist movie than a documentary - it's doc filmmaking at its most cinematic and magnificent.

To celebrate the wisdom of Open City for putting it back up on the big screen, we're giving away a pair of tickets to the screening this Thursday 16th June at 1pm.

TO ENTER, email info@branchagefestival.com with 'MAN ON WIRE' in the subject line, and we'll select a name at random first thing on Wednesday morning (15th June) and email the winner.

Feast upon the rest of the Open City programme here too www.opencitylondon.com !

The word from Cannes...

2011-05-14T15:55:00.000+01:00

Fiona Fletcher, Branchage Manager, dons her sunnies and gets ready for some swanning around...

The Croisette is sweltering and the usual suspects, industry big wigs, critics, chancers and super-tans arrive in force to the other-worldly Cannes Film Festival.

After a calf toning uphill quick march to breezy apartment I hit the Lumiere with a lucky ticket for Cannes opener, Woody Allen's MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. The audience absorbs this nostalgia jest, starring Owen Wilson as self-effacing wannabe writer Gil Pinder and Adrian Brody in a fine tongue-in-cheek turn as Salvador Dali (!) not to mention first lady of France Carla Bruni as a museum guide! Glad to also see rising Brit star Tom Hiddleston (who Branchagers may remember from Joanna Hogg's UNRELATED at the 2009 fest) play a convincing F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Next morning an early rise for Gus Van Sant's quirky teen mortality romance RESTLESS - with a heavy lidded wink to Hal Ashby's 1971 classic HAROLD AND MAUD.

Much anticipated competition film WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT KEVIN (by Scottish director Lynne Ramsay) proves worthy of the hype as well as the sunburn as the eager queues stretch out in the lunchtime heat. A deeply disconcerting and stunningly composed film about a mother son relationship awry from the start.

Escaped crowds and sunk into the patch of beach fronting the British Pavilion. They have a whole host of British features to promote as well as a packed schedule of production and finance advice, director talks and pitching sessions over the course of the festival.

Word on la rue is that competition film erotic debut feature SLEEPING BEAUTY (by novelist turned director Julia Leigh) is one to watch, plus Sundance contender MARTHA, MARCY, MAY, MARLENE which is described by Variety as "expertly crafted and cinematic storytelling".

I'm look forward to Dardenne brothers' A KID WITH A BIKE, plus Lars von Trier's MELANCHOLIA and... well some sleep mainly! Chow for now earthlings x

Felix's Final Tribeca Round Up

2011-05-06T12:05:00.025+01:00

I must say, after attending Tribeca for the past three years, that 2011 has had the best line-up thus far. Documentaries, in particular, had a strong showing (I’ve already written about a few of them in previous entries, so I’ll refrain from mentioning those again here). Sold-out audiences greeted Gone, about a mother searching for answers after her adult son suffers a mysterious death in Vienna; and When The Drum is Beating, which charts the modern history of Haiti through the prism of Septentrional, one of its most popular big bands.

DONOR UNKNOWN

A fascinating subject is covered in Donor Unknown, which observes the gathering of the children of a prolific sperm donor. The offspring of “Donor 150” come together and find their donor -- an eccentric hippie in Venice, California -- via an article in the New York Times. The film helps us to expand the meaning of family, and shows us that, indeed, what us humans crave is a meaningful connection. Ironically, this doc won “Best Documentary” at Tribeca in the “Online” viewing category. Um, whatever happened to connecting and movie-watching as a collective experience?

SEMPER FI: ALWAYS FAITHFUL
Another Tribeca winner, in the “Best Editing in a Documentary Feature” category, Semper Fi: Always Faithful, follows Jerry Ensminger, a Marine veteran whose young daughter is one of several victims of cancer produced by toxic dumping at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Ensminger is fierce and measured in his investigations, and witnessing the fight that numerous cancer survivors and families put up against a numb military bureaucracy is life-affirming. There was nary a dry eye in the audience during the Q&A with filmmakers Rachel Libert, Tony Hardmon and Ensminger.

KORAN BY HEART
Greg Barker’s Koran By Heart is a more conventional crowd-pleaser. Taking the winning formula of other kids-in-competition films (e.g. Spellbound), this doc takes place in Cairo, where hundreds of Muslims congregate to participate in the world championship of Koran recitation. Ages of the participants range from people in their 20s to as young as seven-years old. The filmmaker follows three main characters -- all of them not older than 12 -- and they’re all compelling. At 77 minutes, the film is perfect for family movie night, with great role models in bright-eyed, dedicated protagonists. The adult presence is personified by one of the judges in the competition, an Imam who advocates a moderate Islam. The film was financed by HBO and thus it will receive plenty of airtime.

LIKE WATER

My ever-growing curiosity about mixed martial arts is indulged in the satisfying Like Water by first-time director Pablo Croce (named “Best New Documentary Director”). On the surface, it’s a portrait of Ultimate Fighting Championship Middleweight Champion Anderson Silva as he prepares to defend his title against a powerful contender. In a more elemental way, however, this is the story of good versus evil. Silva is a dark-skinned Brazilian, a charismatic, innate fighter with graceful moves and easygoing personality. His opponent, Chael Sonnen, is a bulky white man from Portland, Oregon, who is easy with explicit racist and xenophobic taunts. The piece does a great job of creating suspense (will Silva snap out of his complacency?), while leaving no doubt who will claim the championship title.

DESPICABLE DICK AND RIGHTEOUS RICHARD

Speaking of redemption, in Despicable Dick and Righteous Richard, a former alcoholic in recovery travels throughout the U.S. to see family and past lovers, seeking to make amends. Predictably, the film is full of awkward encounters. But these feel real; while Richard’s friends and family are eager to get to know this new man, they remain skeptical. Richard himself is heartbreaking. Trying to stay present as he exorcises his past is a hard, yet commendable task.

CAIRO EXIT | MY LAST ROUND

I didn’t catch much on the narrative end of the festival. The selection I did watch -- Cairo Exit and My Last Round -- reflected Tribeca’s increasing interest in global filmmaking, for which it should be applauded. Too bad they both were rather mediocre. The Egyptian Cairo Exit has a Romeo and Juliet romance between a Muslim and a Christian at its center. As such, it is intensely melodramatic. I preferred its quiet moments, and didn’t even mind its fantasy happy ending. In contrast, My Last Round, an entry from Chile, is a bit too quiet. In this film, a love triangle between a journeyman middle-aged boxer, his young boyfriend, and the latter’s new crush on his female co-worker, cannot but end in tragedy. That much is predictable. I did find the performances affecting and very moving at times -- I just wished there wasn’t so much lull in between the moving of the plot.

THE BLEEDING HOUSE

Horror is one of my favorite genres, so after much “eating-your-veggies” with all the documentaries I was consuming, I was ecstatic in indulging my craving with The Bleeding House. What can I say? I know not to expect much beyond some predictable chills and thrills, but I was disappointed. A mysterious traveling man seeks shelter after his car breaks down in the woods. The hosts are a dysfunctional family (is there any other kind in horror?) with a really weird teenage daughter (she displays a remarkable bug collection in her room that would make any entomologist envious). They also hold a deep, dark secret. Can you guess what’s coming? Mystery man speaks in odd phrases punctuated by a folksy Southern accent? Check. Mystery man did not end up there by coincidence? Check. Mystery man sees himself as a messenger of God delivering punishment, but manifests as a psycho into slicing and bleeding out family members, hence the title of this gem? Um, check. The film doesn’t work because it fails in one crucial way: make the audience care. For a more masterful take on a traveler as trickster/avenging angel, please see Charles Burnett’s To Sleep With Anger, where all the bleeding is internal.

SHORT FILMS

The festival’s shorts programmes were a mixed bag, as expected. The best selection was the one I was dreading the most: under the programme title “Impressions of Memory,” it showcased experimental work. Predictable elements included extensive use of archival footage; looping images; black and white as well as psychedelic colors; and asynchronous sound. Aside from this minor peeve, there were several gems. Highlights were the hypnotic After The Fire by Jacques Perconte, The D Train by the veteran New Yorker Jay Rosenblatt, the coyly sexy Strips by Felix Dufour-Laperriere, and the nostalgic process art piece Bye Bye Super 8 by Johan Kramer. My favorite, though, was Melissa Friedling’s Garden Roll Bounce Parking Lot, an affectionate portrait of kids reflecting on a forgettable piece of pop culture that nevertheless holds meaning for them.

Filmmaker Q&A following the Impressions of Memory shorts programme

There were several fascinating short docs -- a category that handily trumped its narrative counterpart, in my opinion. (This could be the subject of a debate about whether short-form documentaries are intrinsically better than short narratives. We won’t conduct that debate now -- don’t worry!) Rick Rodgers profiles a rock-duo in Crash & Burn, at the moment when one of its members decides to transition from male to female. San Francisco’s role in the history of representations of sex in the U.S. is the subject of Smut Capital of America (which had a delightful cast of talking heads, including the hilarious John Waters). In Jonathan VanBallenbergue’s Guru (Special Jury Mention), a motivational speaker is revealed as suffering from severe bipolar disorder.

Perhaps the reason I’m hard on the narrative shorts is that filmmakers stay formulaic due to the time limitations of the category. In several instances -- Marion Pilonwsky’s The Ride (starring a menacing Anthony LaPaglia) and Nightlife by Shandor Garrison -- the set-ups and conclusions are stories we have seen before, over and over. Even when contexts and characters were slightly tweaked, as in those in Jon Kauffman’s Storm Up The Sky (Hasidic Jewish brothers in Williamsburg, Brooklyn) and Vinz Feller’s Down This Road (Latino father and twelve-year old son in Washington Heights), the end results were disappointing. An exception was the Student Visionary Award winner Rooms by Joanna Jurewicz. In it, a luminescent Marianne Jean-Baptiste plays an immigrant maid who forges an unexpected connection with one of her hotel’s guests. And even though I could see the ending of this one coming, my heart still broke for her.

Tribeca still has way more “product” than many other festivals, perhaps to fit a city with such large and diverse tastes. It’s the kind of festival where you have to sit down and “study” the programme to make your selections (and indeed, it pays to do so -- ticket prices are not cheap). But I also learned that sometimes it’s in the letting go and going with the flow that lovely discoveries are to be found.

Felix reports from Tribeca Film Festival, Part 3

2011-05-05T11:15:00.001+01:00

In a previous entry, I briefly remarked on the documentary Our School by Mona Nicoara and Miruna Coca-Cozma. I first became acquainted with this project when I participated in IFP’s Documentray Rough Cut Lab last year. Mona and Miruna were there, too. Back then, I previewed scenes from their film and also had many conversations with this team. Imagine then my delight when I attended the doc’s World premiere at Tribeca this year. I was lucky to make one of the sold-out screenings. Our School is a longitudinal film that follows the paths of three Roma schoolchildren of different ages as they navigate Romania’s mandate to integrate their schools - previously, Roma and non-Roma went to separate (and unequal) institutions.

Stylistically, the film unfolds with little interaction with the filmmakers, more of an observational piece a la Frederick Wiseman (but without the really long takes). Characters are engaging, which helped me become invested in their journeys. I especially appreciated seeing the Roma community depicted in a complex and compassionate manner. During the filmmaker Q&A, the production team (which included emerging editor Erin Casper, first recipient of the Karen Schmeer Editing Fellowship for her work on Our School) was able to fill in some of the gaps left by the film’s open-ended finale. In a moment of levity, when Casper was asked about her process working with so much footage covering a long span of years, co-director Nicoara joked that the editor could now speak Romanian with a Transylvanian accent.

Our School filmmakers: (L-R) Erin Casper, Mona Nicoara, and Miruna Coca-Cozma

Another one of my favorite Tribeca entries this year also happens to come from fellow participants in IFP’s Lab, Michael Collins and Marty Syjuco. Set in the U.S., Spain, and the Philippines, Give Up Tomorrow, records the struggle to win the release of an innocent man wrongly convicted of the rape and murder of two sisters. The film is a relentless indictment of a corrupt political and judicial system, and of the vestiges of colonialism that still haunt a country and its people. I remember chatting with Syjuco about the challenges of editing a documentary that uses material collected from various sources (newscasts, archival, original interviews, re-enactments, etc.) and throughout almost 8 years. That this team has created a film that isn’t only engaging and coherent, but also immensely powerful, is nothing short of amazing.

I’m proud and grateful to have been a part of the lab with these amazing filmmakers.

Felix reports from Tribeca Film Festival, Part 2

2011-05-04T10:48:00.000+01:00

It’s been a whirlwind of movie-watching at Tribeca, and so this will be a short entry. Most screenings have been sold out from the get-go. Great news for the festival! As much as I’ve seen so far, I’ve also been at the cut-off point in the RUSH line queue. Two highlights have been the documentaries OUR SCHOOL by Mona Nicoara and Miruna Coca-Cozma and GIVE UP TOMORROW directed by Michael Collins and produced by Marty Syjuco. I will write more about those two projects on my next entry, but suffice it to say for now that I predict they will do well in the festival circuit. For now, here are a couple of photos so you get a sense of the festival’s ambiance.

Felix reports from Tribeca Film Festival, Part 1

2011-04-26T11:56:00.020+01:00

While we've been sunning ourselves over the long weekend in the UK, New York has been enjoying a feast of films at the Tribeca Film Festival.

Our man in NY, Felix Endara, has given up sleeping, eating and mooching about in order to round up the festival for Branchage folk far and wide.

Please give it up for Part 1 of Felix's Tribeca round up:

INITIAL IMPRESSIONS OF TRIBECA

For me, the tenth annual Tribeca Film Festival started not with a bang, perhaps; but rather with several drip-drops of the remaining Spring showers. And yet, the first film I caught was the charming portrait of sushi chef as master artist, Jiro Dreams of Sushi. Beautifully shot, the doc records minutely all the elements that go into the creation of a master chef - not just Jiro’s attention to detail, but his willingness to sacrifice family and leisure for a larger purpose. Jiro’s two sons follow in his footsteps, with varying degrees of success. I enjoyed learning about this fascinating character; less interesting was the repeated use of shots of chefs constructing a roll and placing it on a square plate.

Another fascinating portrait was revealed in Marie Losier’s Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye, which premiered earlier this year at Berlinale. The film depicts the romantic relationship between Genesis P-Orridge, British pioneer musician of industrial sounds with bands Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV; and Lady Jaye, an American dominatrix and performance artist. Their connection so deep, the couple decides to merge into one by undergoing cosmetic surgery to resemble each other. The remarkable result is named “Pandrogyne,” their ultimate art collaboration. I found their connection moving, and I also appreciated learning about industrial music and Genesis’ process in creating music. At the same time, his voice and point of view were so dominant, I missed hearing Lady Jaye’s perspective. In this sense, as dedicated a lover as Genesis appears, this ballad comes off one-sided.

In The Loving Story, we are witnesses to an important mark in U.S. history. Richard and Mildred Loving were a married inter-racial couple in the 1960s, a time when miscegenation was still illegal in 20 states. The film makes extensive use of archival footage to recount their fight to have their relationship recognized and accepted. Ultimately, by taking their case to the Supreme Court, in 1967, the Lovings helped to change the course of racial relations in this country, inching us closer to fairness and justice.

Another pioneer who chooses to take it to the legal courts - to fight for her right to play on a tennis court - is the subject of Renee. Born Richard Raskind in New York, 1934, and becoming Renee Richards in the 1970s, she moves to California to start life anew; but leaves behind an ex-wife and young son. While there, she makes waves as the newest tennis sensation to surface in women’s tennis. Rumors of her transsexual status create controversy and backlash, to the point of the U.S. Tennis Association banning her from entering the U.S. Open unless she can confirm her female status. Richards sues and wins her right to play in the tournament. As an amateur tennis player, I vaguely recall hearing of Richards as a teenager. Watching this doc helped to fill in some memory gaps, and added another layer of complexity to Richards, shown self-realized as a woman, but deeply guilty for abandoning her son, an adult struggling with addiction.

It’s been an impressive first week of movie-watching and I commend Tribeca for a great line-up. I caught up briefly with filmmaker Mona Nicoara, whose documentary about Roma schoolchildren, Our School, is making its debut here. I met Mona a year ago, as we were both fellows of IFP’s Documentary Rough Cut Labs. We had great chats about where we were both at with our projects, and met her production team, including her editor, the lovely Erin Casper (recipient of the first Karen Schmeer Editing Fellowship). I know all screenings of Our School are currently sold out, but I’m still going to line-up in the RUSH queue and try to see this amazing project.

PEOPLE OF JERSEY - BE A PART OF OUR SUPER 8 PROJECT

2011-04-20T14:50:00.001+01:00

CALL FOR CONTRIBUTIONS

What would a movie filmed in Jersey over a period of 50 years be like? What if the camera operators were the people who live in the Island? If the stars were their families and friends? And if the setting was the living rooms, gardens, fields and beaches of Jersey?

We want to make this film installation, and we want to make it with you. If you have a stash of Super 8 footage, make it part of Super 8 Island – a film installation featuring footage of Jersey, shot by the people of Jersey.

Fritz Stolberg is an artist who works with found footage and archive material. He’ll be coming to Jersey to gather as much footage as possible and transform it into a film installation that documents Island life over the decades. He’ll be working with Bristol-based musicians This Is The Kit to create a soundtrack to the installation, and the whole thing will culminate in a special one-off event at Branchage Festival 2011. Or so is the aim!

What will the film installation be about? That all depends on your footage. It’s an exciting and unknown quantity and Fritz will use the footage itself to guide him.

Liberate the Super 8 memories in your attics and see them become part of a document of Jersey.

HOW TO GET INVOLVED:

If you have footage you’d like to share, however special or seemingly ordinary, please contact Sam Heinrichs on marketing@branchagefestival.com, or call the Branchage office on 020 7739 1074 and tell us a bit about it.

DEADLINE FOR CONTRIBUTIONS: WEDNESDAY 1ST JUNE 2011
(please ensure you contact us before this date so that we have enough time to make the magic happen!)

PLEASE NOTE: Fritz and the Branchage Team understand how special this personal footage is and will treat it with the utmost care, you won’t lose a frame.

Truthiness and Falsiness in Columbia, Missouri

2011-03-15T16:20:00.002Z

Branchage went to the insanely enjoyable True/False Film Festival in Missouri last week. We're extremely proud to be associated with this very special documentary festival, and we fell in love with the town of Columbia, MO. Here are some thoughts on some of the films we saw...

On the Saturday evening of the True/False weekend, the film festival hosted a gameshow called Gimme Truth. The panel of documentary filmmakers had to decide which of ten two-minute locally-made documentaries was 'true' and which was total fiction. Each film shown to panel and audience was either 100% factual or 100% made up. The panel struggled to correctly peg even half the films. The audience loved it.

It's no great shakes to point out that the tension between realness and fakeness was always going to be prominent at a festival called True/False, but T/F 2011 seemed to revel in paddling about in the murky waters of Documentary Truth. It's been forty-odd years since the heyday of the Maysles brothers, but there's often still a hankering after verite and a strange amount of stick thrown at docs that stray too far into artifice. (What bothered people more about CATFISH, for example - that the filmmakers were taking advantage of a vulnerable (and possibly ill) documentary subject, or that they were trying to take the savvy viewer for a ride?).

Gimme Truth gameshow

A panel event on 'hybrid documentaries' (so very) early on the Friday morning of the festival looked at reenactments, dramatisations and staged scenes, with four intimidatingly interesting panelists, and led us to check out Marcin Sauter's NORTH FROM CALABRIA.

This Polish imagining of a perfect rural village is filled with dozy eccentrics, agreeable visitors, strangely imaginative teens, a lot of pottering, a little sputtering, a significant amount of muttering, some indulgent friendships, some incomprehensible amateur dramatics, some inappropriate giggling and a tender selection of old love, new love, young not-really-love and unlikely courting... It's an absolute delight from start to finish. Marcin Sauter went off in search of the village he wanted to make a film about, and by taking 12 actors with him he created that village. His portrait of Chelmsko Slaskie gorgeously renders everything that is enigmatic, special and idiosyncratic about mundane life.

In a post-screening Q&A Sauter took pleasure in not revealing which of the villagers are his actors - they may have been brought in and given a brief, but their interactions are still real enough. (Sidenote: here's to Q&As with witty deadpan Polish directors speaking through cheery translators - as Sauter spoke you couldn't guess he was finishing with a joke until the brilliant translator laughed as she was about to say it. It was perfect).

Fellow panelist Clio Barnard's actors are as clear as Sauter's are obscured. Using actors to lip-sync to recorded interviews with the family and neighbours of the late playwright Andrea Dunbar has an extraordinary effect - distancing you from the characters in THE ARBOR while simultaneously connecting you to them and their stories more intimately than you ever really feel with talking heads interviewees. There's something eerie about the disembodied voices emanating but not quite emanating from the characters you are watching, as they move like slow, ominous ghosts through the kitchens and bedrooms of the Buttershaw Estate where Dunbar lived her whole short life. The performances are just extraordinary, feeling so real even while you know they are not, as the cast act along to every stutter, sob, false start or mis-placed breath of the source interviews, and it all comes out in deliciously thick Bradford accents (that required subtitling for the American/international audience).

Added to this are blistering performances of Dunbar's plays (themselves autobiographical) staged with just some shabby furniture in the middle of the grassy quad of the Estate. The crowd gathered around to watch includes other actors from the film and a rabble of confused or intrigued local inhabitants. So many levels of truth, acting, and reality here.

In the panel discussion, Barnard mused that all documentary involves some level of artifice - some decision of the filmmaker, the cinematographer, the editor, that alters 'reality'. In THE ARBOR she is interested in exposing all of that artifice and flagging up the discrepancy between realness and what you can possibly portray in film. She does that here to stunning and moving effect. (Someone more pretentious might say it's Brechtian in its frame-breaking qualities. But not us, no...)

And then there was LA BOCCA DEL LUPO. At once a document of the love story of weather-beaten ex-convict Enzo and Mary, who waited patiently for him; and a sultry, evocative love-note to the weather-beaten city of Genoa through the ages. And it's also a rejoicing in the weirdness of people, with strange barmen performing an inscrutable dance to camera... Pietro Marcello's film is flagrant and beautiful in its constructedness, using reams of layered archive footage of Genoa, cut into lengthy shots of Enzo (both character and actor) wandering the cobbled streets, or hanging at his fruit stand. Marcello conjures a rich, poetic, scruffy kind of an Italian world, ancient but in flux. And then, all of a sudden, all that is replaced by the most extraordinary, long, fixed camera joint interview with Mary, who talks, and Enzo, who sulks indulgently. Marcello informed the audience after the screening, that's not an interview, it's a confession.

We heard that Oliver Laxe's YOU ARE ALL CAPTAINS is another film from T/F that would fit in with this lot, but there were only 4 days and 40-odd films to watch plus panels, parades and parties... so we've asked for a DVD and will post an appendix another time...

But the film that started the festival for us was Robert Greene's FAKE IT SO REAL, and although it doesn't use actors, or lip-synching, or wear its artifice on its sleeve, it depicts so tenderly the balancing of fake and real (specifically in American independent pro wrestling) that it nicely set the tone for a weekend of True/False-ness at True/False. And with audiences as astute and engaged as those at T/F the similarities between wrestling and documentary-making (shaping reality to make it entertaining? creating narrative to keep an audience hooked? developing characters that people will engage with? all while trying to seem 'real'?) won't have gone unnoticed.

FAKE IT SO REAL, though, following a week in the life of the director's cousin and his wrestling team, is captivating and charming, and with a cast of amazingly strange characters it doesn't need to do much faking.

What this trailer captures is the eccentricity, the posturing, the play acting and the real physical stresses and pains. What you'll have to wait for the film to appreciate is the love, the sense of community and camaraderie, the teasing, the efforts, the skill, the sense of a man finding something he's pretty good at when maybe he wasn't so good at too many other things... the sense of a man who's spent a lot of years not fitting in and searching for a place for himself finding it in communion with a group of other men who may be a bit like that too... And when it comes to the earnest rookie Gabriel, determined to fine tune his wrestling persona as a make-up wearing angel, you find yourself rooting for the most cringingly watchable underdog imaginable. When Gabe mentions that his ex-girlfriend has a restraining order against him, uncle-like fellow wrestler David whistles, 'oh, so you're that guy'.

Beautifully and intimately shot, and tightly edited with an eye for humour, gentle mocking, and the sweetness of storytelling, FAKE IT SO REAL is a nugget of joy.

It's painfully trite to say, but FAKE IT SO REAL kicked off our True/False weekend with a reminder that the faking of it can add to the real of it, the False of it adds to the True of it, and it's all the other stuff - the heart of it - that makes the difference.

March March: Rain couldn't rain on T/F's parade

No room here to write about how mentally brilliant all of the rest of the festival was, but just enough space to cram in a shout out for all of the people who run True/False and who make it so pleasurable and easy to enjoy - you'll spot them at 10am creeping around behind panelists adjusting microphones, peddling back and forth across town on their push bikes all day, charming their guests over nibbles in the evening, and wiggling on the dance floor at 4am. Every day of the festival. Always grinning.

We met him in jersey we did

2011-03-14T18:21:00.000Z

Roger Allam has just won the Olivier Award for best actor for his role as Falstaff at the Globe.

Allam with his gong, and another person

Anyone at the Opening Night screening of 2010's Branchage festival will know the award was well deserved, as Roger treated the audience in Jersey's Opera House to an impromptu delivery of Falstaff's famous monologue. He got a thunderous standing ovation... and even more impressively it earned him a steak at the Royal Yacht afterwards from a Branchage-Team-in-awe.

Allam as Falstaff at the Globe

Roger had flown to Jersey directly from a matinee performance at the Globe last September, as we were opening the festival with a screening of TAMARA DREWE, in which he starred.

Congratulations to him. Congratulations to one and all.

A small percentage of everything we'd like to see at BEV 2011

2011-02-23T12:46:00.002Z

Just a couple of weeks to go until this year's Birds Eye View Film Festival, 8th to 17th March. So much going on at the festival - with fiction features, docs, shorts, fashion films, restrospectives, music vids and training events - that we've done a little pre-digesting for the Branchage Blogage. Just picking out some of the little gems we're looking forward to....

Starting off with DR JEKYLL AND MR HYDE on Friday 11th March - Birds Eye View have commissioned the wonderful Blue Roses (aka Laura Groves) to write a soundtrack to John S Robertson's 1920 version of the famous Jekyll and Hyde story. This film is just everything that was utterly brilliant about the very early horror movies, tremendously and freakily acted by John Barrymore. We can't wait to see it on the big screen with Blue Roses' live score. Here's her myspace to get a feel for her brilliance.

Brilliant range of documentaries showing as well, and we're looking forward to catching these three in particular: SELF MADE - Turner Prizewinner Gillian Wearing's debut feature follows members of the public using Method acting to access personal memories and experience. It's been called 'startlingly original' and was the talk of the town at London Film Festival.

BEV have also managed to score a special preview screening of the new doc by Oscar-nominee Lucy Walker (nominated for WASTE LAND, which is out in the UK this week). New film COUNTDOWN TO ZERO (at BEV on Weds 16th March) is an investigation into nuclear arms - the history, the politics and the risks. The screening is followed by a masterclass with Lucy Walker.

And then there's GUILTY PLEASURES - bit lighter maybe, but we can't wait for this UK doc all about Mills & Boon readers around the world. And they said romance was dead!

Great fiction features too of course - we'll definitely be watching Susanne Bier's IN A BETTER WORLD, Kelly Reichardt's MEEK'S CUTOFF and Lena Dunham's TINY FURNITURE, but also looking forward to the UK Premiere of NIGHT CATCHES US, starring Anthony Mackie, on Weds 9th March. 'Searing' is a word that's being used a lot to describe this drama about the legacy of Philadelphia's Black Panther movement. And a 'pounding' new score by The Roots. Watch the trailer, just watch this trailer. Great, huh?

Deep breath - there's also... Bloody Women, their season of horror films including seminal silents by women pioneering the genre, recent classic horror movies made by women, and a panel discussion on women's role in the genre. It's going to be HORRIFIC.

Then there's music videos, fashion film, innovation, training...

That's quite enough for now though. We need a lie down.

Good old YARN

2011-02-03T11:55:00.004Z

We've spent the last happy hour wallowing around the excellent programme for YARNfest 2011 coming up in mid-February and it looks like it's going to top last year's brilliant debut festival. So much good stuff. If we ever diarised anything, we would undoubtedly diarise this...

YARN celebrates storytelling - through film, theatre, music, illustration and literature. That means you get a company of actors improvising randomly-selected films, you get live illustration to spoken word, you get a crash course in making your own zine. YARN somehow manages to feel totally grounded and unpretentious and just filled up with really interesting, unusual, creative and fun events.

Here's the top three events that have really piqued our interest (but all the rest looks ace too, honest!)

Lights! Camera! Improvise! The Improvised Movie Live On Stage

Sunday 20th Feb 5pm-6pm // The Book Club // £3

The audience suggest a genre, location, theme and title. The company improvise the whole movie; complete with action sequences, captivating plot and a thrilling live film score. There's even DVD extras. www.thescatpack.co.uk

Illustrationarium – LIVE!

Sunday 20th Feb 6.30pm-8.30pm // The Book Club // £3

Hear the words and see the story illustrated live. Authors, storytellers and illustrators, include Chris Cleave, Helen Smith, Rachel Rose Reid, Neil McFarland, Carlos Garde-Martin, and, Luke Waller.

And this one, oh my, this is a sure sell out right?

Cover Wars – The Buddha of Suburbia

Monday 21st Feb 7.30pm-10pm // The Queen of Hoxton // £5

Four illustrators representing illustration networks across London will pit their pens, pencils, brushes and glue against each other in a battle to create the best book cover for Hanif Kureishi’s ‘Buddha of Suburbia’ live on the night. Hanif Kureishi will read excerpts on the night as well join Jon Gray of Gray318 on the judging panel.

Super Henry Cavill - I believe he can fly

2011-02-02T12:08:00.003Z

Henry Cavill has been cast as Superman for the new installment of the superhero saga scheduled for release late 2012.

Did you know Henry Cavill is from Jersey? Which explains why he has such super qualities, like being really good at acting, and the whole being able to fly thing. Those are the two main reasons he got the role.

It's all to do with drinking milk from Jersey cows.

Being cast as Superman means Henry Cavill's career will soar to great heights, and we think he's brill and thoroughly deserving. There will be a lot of school friends, family and neighbours in Jersey waiting with excitement to see Henry in his tights and cape. Exciting times!

Branchage got wed

2011-01-19T14:41:00.001Z

Russian Bride: Plaster of Paris perform

Last Wednesday night Branchage took over the beautiful Shoreditch Church for the matrimonial ceremony to end all matrimonial ceremonies.

Musical interlude: vocal group the Barefoot Howlers

The event, 'Branchage Proposes Marriage', celebrated the rituals and traditions of marriage across the world and the ages, with a glorious selection of black&white cinema, live piano scoring, groups of musicians, wandering performers, and rare Balkan wedding vinyl playing.

The String Quartet: Rhosyn

The congregation

A week on, the honeymoon is over, but the blushing bride is still basking in the memory of her Big Day.

Thanks to all the performers, set-builders, artists, technicians and friends who participated in our nuptials.

See more pictures on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/branchagefilmfestival/

Trish Keenan dies aged 42

2011-01-15T11:13:00.001Z

We are saddened to hear the tragic news that Trish Keenan, lead singer of Birmingham electro-pop group Broadcast, died yesterday morning.

The BBC reports she died of pneumonia as a result of contracting swine flu during the group's pre-christmas tour.

We met Trish and her partner James Cargill in 2008 when they came to Jersey to perform at Branchage as part of a night of artists represented by Warp Records. Warp have released a statement saying 'This is an untimely, tragic loss and we will miss Trish dearly - a unique voice, an extraordinary talent and a beautiful human being. Rest in peace.'

Our thoughts are with her friends and family.

From the volunteer's mouth: A Guest Blog Post

2010-12-20T15:22:00.003Z

Today, a guest blog post from Assistant Extraordinaire Sam Taylor, pondering how he found his way to the Branchage... (and we're gosh darn glad he did).

Hi there! For me, that is Sam Taylor, Branchage was an event I was clueless about until 2 years ago. What brought on this drastic change you say? Whilst doing an AS in media studies, my teacher asked me if I’d like to represent Branchage for the school, Victoria College, a job which I can honestly say I was abysmal at, was it nerves? Who knows, at the time it was quite a daunting prospect, and juggled with the ‘responsibilities’ of a budding six former probably not the most mature decision to have made. Thankfully, despite that blunder, I have now been helping out wherever I can for two consecutive festivals.

It may not sound much at first to be running odd-jobs here and there, but regardless of said impression I was actually dead chuffed to be part of the events, making sure that tickets were delivered (relatively) on time, and that everyone was in the mood for a good time!

Hopefully I helped out at the festivals, I definitely know I had a blast; and as a result opted to help Xanthe (as best I could) with the opening of her current event in Jersey ‘Whatever Else Remains’, an art exhibition that promises to be equally as incredible for any buyers as it is for the hyper-active 18 year old, thrilled that he’s got the chance to be close to so much art (that’s me, by the way.)

Personally my favourite pieces that are being exhibited are from the street-art spectrum of sales, whereas the Hirst’s and Emin’s are, I find, just dead boring; I mean how clueless do you have to be to think that four differently coloured spots are worth thousands?! Maybe I have no taste...

Put a face to the name... this is Sam:

Give Us This Day... OUR DAILY BREAD + LIVE SCORE

2010-12-08T18:45:00.004Z

At the Roundhouse, London, SUNDAY 19th DECEMBER 2010.

Watching Nikolaus Geyrhalter's mesmerising documentary Our Daily Bread is more like gradually tracking through a series of stunning photographs, each one a tableau of modern industrial food production in some form. From soulless production lines to doomed animals it's a slow and meditative journey through this massive, surreal and disturbing industry. Beautiful, eerie, at times witty, often unpleasant, there are some humans dotted throughout the mechanised landscape, but interaction is limited in this nearly wordless hygienic world.

The Studio Theatre at the Roundhouse, Camden, consistently puts on brilliant, one-off, very special Special Events, we like this, and we like the fact that on Sunday 19th December they're putting on Pevin Kinel's inspired live score to the Our Daily Bread. Also what's nice is that it's in association with Branchage and the utterly excellent film and music website The Quietus.

Branchage commissioned this soundtrack for our 2010 festival, and as it was only on once, in Jersey, and in a barn on an organic farm, there are lots of people out there who won't have had the chance to see it. Now is your time.

We're very proud to be associated with this event.

You can read more and buy tickets on the Roundhouse website or join the facebook event and share it with your pals.

Battle of Branchage back in the news

2010-11-15T13:00:00.004Z

Seeper, (the digital/interactive artists who masterminded the Battle of Branchage projections onto Gorey castle at our 2009 festival), are back in the news for a digital mapping projection they've just done in Derby.

Check out the video on BBC - they couldn't resist a few clips of the Battle of Branchage. Still looks as stunning as ever, so for the sake of reminiscence, let's see the original Battle of Branchage video again too...

Still, like, bends our minds man!

Make it snappy...

2010-11-12T11:46:00.003Z

In celebration of a really lovely, creative, inspiring old competition from Picturehouse Cinemas, the Branchage office will be spending (some of) this weekend getting trigger happy with any photographic devices we can lay our sticky paws on.

Tell a story in ten pictures. About anything you like. So simple... but oh so very much choice.

Obviously we'll be entering the competition for purely high-minded artful reasons and the joy of creation... but as a side-note, we notice that all entries will go up online here and the three winning stories will get screened at Picturehouse cinemas across the UK, and will also win a Kodak wee small HD pocket video camera (want one want one want one).

While away some minutes at www.picturehouses.co.uk/yourstory looking through the photo-stories that have already been uploaded. Like this one, with an unexpected ending... http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/yourstory/entry9.html.

Ah, happy happy snappy. x

Sheffield Doc/Fest 2010

2010-11-10T17:03:00.004Z

Branchage spent a wonderful 3 days at the UK's biggest (and bestest) documentary film festival last weekend, Sheffield Doc/Fest - an inspiring and timely reminder of the range, breadth, effect and joy of documentaries.

From political investigative journalism to meditative personal stories, and interactive web films to large-scale cinematic visions, Doc/Fest has it all by the bucket load, and we had a rather pleasant time paddling through as much as we could fit in.

Festival favourite was probably Benda Bilili, a music doc with an irresistible Congolese Rumba soundtrack, great characters, more triumph-over-adversity than you can shake a stick at, and not a patronising or navel-gazing scene in sight. As well as being talented soul musicians, the members of Team Benda Bilili are disabled (mostly due to childhood polio) and living for the most part on the harsh streets of Kinshasa. Life is brutal, recording stops because the challenges of food and shelter are more immediate, but over five years the filming continues and a brilliant first album is created.

Our Top-of-the-Pops also includes Laura Fairrie's The Battle For Barking, an astonishingly balanced look at the 8 months leading up to the May 6th elections in the Dagenham and Barking constituency, where Labour's Margaret Hodge fought an unexpectedly tough campaign against Nick Griffin and the BNP. The filmmaker's access to both sides and her tenacious commitment to following the campaign trail makes for more insight into both parties at local level than we've ever seen before. Wonderful, measured and very human, it was the deserved winner of the Sheffield Youth Jury Award.

Wholly different but equally unforgettable was Marwencol - the name of the model town in Mark Hogancamp's back yard populated with personalised barbie dolls and GI Joes. This intricate and entirely absorbing miniature world was Mark's response to a traumatic attack that left him in a coma and robbed him of his memory of life before the attack, of his physical capabilities and of his confidence in himself and in the world. By creating and photographing scenes in Marwencol, Mark can make tentative explorations of the world and of his own emotional landscape. In life he has been brutally reminded of his mortality and limitations, but in Marwencol he is a creator as well as a participant. It is the most original and artistic self therapy you can imagine. We left the film full of wonder and extremely moved.

So many other excellent films (and many that we didn't manage to get to), so just a quick shout out for Donor Unknown (Jerry Rothwell), the utterly brilliant and important On the Streets (Penny Woolcock) and the beautiful and troubling short film Diary (Tim Hetherington).

AND LEST WE FORGET... Branchage patron and hero Kim Longinotto was there with her new film Pink Saris, which we are delighted to say won the festival's prestigious Special Jury Prize.

While we're on the subject of Branchage loves... also screening was Shooting Blind, the short film directed by Andrew Whitehouse, a Jersey resident and dedicated Branchage volunteer. Huge congratulations for an excellent film which has been duly noted as so by the very excellent Doc/Fest.

Stunning weekend, heart Doc/Fest.
x

2 weeks till Encounters

2010-11-03T15:11:00.003Z

Only two weeks till the 16th Encounters International Film Festival... it's an excellent programme - six days of new and established international short and animated film talent, UK premieres, workshops, industry events, awards and special guests.

16th - 21st November

Highlights of the Brief Encounters strand include the presence of the utterly brilliant Andy Serkis (right), as well as filmmakers including Ken Wardrop, Dan Geesin and Alicia Duffy.

Highlights of the Animated Encounters strand include a programme celebrating graffiti in animation and comedian Tim Minchin on 'Desert Island Flicks'.

Amazing.

And it's in lovely friendly Bristol.

You can't argue with that. x

www.encounters-festival.org.uk

Branchage at Doc/Fest

2010-11-02T18:05:00.000Z

Branchage's lead programmer, Philip Ilson Esq., will be speaking at Sheffield Doc/Fest this Saturday on the 'Screenings that Rock!' panel.

As a seasoned programmer and event producer both at Branchage and at a myriad of other filmic events including his own festival - London Short Film Festival - Philip's got a wealth of experience in how to turn a screening into an event. He's joined on the panel by Simon Kilmurry and Jaimie D'Cruz.

All the panel events at this year's utterly brilliant Doc/Fest look unmissable, but 'Screenings that Rock!' is a real must for any independent filmmakers trying to get their films out there with tactics on how to grab an advantage over studio films and make your screening stand out. Um, make your screening... Rock!

Full details of the panel here:

Doc/Fest film programme here:

Anyone going to Sheffield for Doc/Fest? Let us know, we'll see you there!

Only two sleeps to go! x

Fund a film and change the world

2010-10-28T13:31:00.001+01:00

We're dead keen on a brilliant new initiative being run by Sheffield Doc/Fest - they're opening up the whole crowd funding for documentaries thing, and it means you or me or any of our pals can help to finance an amazing doc. And how do we know it's going to be amazing? Because the general public will choose who should get the money from a shortlist made by Sheffield Doc/Fest - and if anyone knows what makes a proper good documentary, it's them.

They've selected six projects who will pitch live on stage on Saturday 6th November at Doc/Fest. They're asking you to pledge money to a central pot. They'll then ask the audience to decide on an overall winner who will win the pot.

It's not just helping that one film either, it's helping to prove to the world, the film industry, and impoverished frustrated filmmakers everywhere that crowd funding is a viable and excellent alternative to the usual restrictive and loveless funding channels.

Everyone's a winner baby, that's the truth.

Information about the six shortlisted projects is up online here, along with a more sensible and thorough explanation of the scheme.

Get involved.

In lieu of an appropriate image to sum up the brilliance of crowd funding and why you should definitely give some money to this, I offer this picture of a baby donkey.

Bo Ningen Album Launch Gig

2010-10-22T16:47:00.006+01:00

The impossibly brilliant Bo Ningen - responsible for one of the most lauded events at this year's Branchage festival - launch their debut album with a typically excellent sounding event with live performances from the band and some other great cohorts.

Branchage hearts Bo Ningen and everything they do, so we expect we'll probably run into you there.

Here's some pictures of Bo Ningen playing at Branchage.

Here's some actual information about the event:

Monday 8th Nov, 8pm - 12am
Stolen Recordings & Far East Electric Psychedelic present the launch of Bo Ningen's debut album

BO NINGEN with special guests Invasion, Lasers From Atlantis, DJ's Tim Noble and Sue Webster, Rhys Webb (The Horrors) & Sammy Seven

CAMP BASEMENT
70 - 74 City Rd,
London, EC1Y 2BJ
Nearest tube: Old Street
£6 entry
http://www.wegottickets.com/event/94637
‘They're fantastically energetic, often brain-crushingly heavy, and quite probably the most exciting young band in London right now.’ MOJO ‘The Future Now’ best new bands for 2010

http://www.myspace.com/boningen

A Psychedelic Western-Musical

2010-09-19T17:29:00.001+01:00

Did you know... there are Welsh-speaking Argentinians? An actual community in Patagonia whose first language is welsh.

Super Furry Animals frontman Gruff Rhys is also Welsh. In the brilliantly entertaining documentary Separado! Gruff heads off across South America hunting down his own poncho-wearing welsh-singing uncle. And he does a little singing himself.

AND (this is the big news) Gruff Rhys and the film's director Dylan 'Goch' Jones are both (yeah, both) coming to Jersey to Branchage's screening of Separado! next Saturday.

See this trailer to whet your appetite.

Saturday 25th Sept, 7pm, Jersey Arts Centre
More info and tickets HERE

See you there Amigos.

x

Tamara Drewe star is coming to Jersey...

2010-09-18T13:09:00.000+01:00

Latest news - we've confirmed that Roger Allam, star of Branchage's Opening Night film 'Tamara Drewe' will be coming to Jersey for the Gala Screening on Thurs 23rd Sept.

Roger plays writer Nicholas Hardiment in Stephen Frears' latest Great British Comedy, also starring Gemma Arterton, Dominic Cooper and Tamsin Grieg.

Roger will join us on stage at the Jersey Opera House for an interview about the film, how it feels to be the lead actor in a huge sensation like Tamara Drewe, and his illustrious career on stage and screen.

Some tickets still available for this opening night gala screening - check www.branchagefestival.com for links.

Extra Extra

2010-09-15T23:26:00.000+01:00

The full festival programme is now available for your reading pleasure in the form of a our handy-to-read Branchage Newspapers.

Hot off the press, as they say. Pick up your free copy today.

Tickets and Cattle

2010-09-14T11:50:00.001+01:00

Branchage's 2010 Box Office has opened.

Step into a world of brick-a-brack and dreams as you enter the Branchage Box Office, perched sweetly on the corner of Cattle Street and Burrard Street. For it is a world of forgotten antiques and untold treasures. Namely, the treasures are loads of tickets that are on sale there for all the films, events, music, performance and parties coming up at Branchage.

13 Cattle Street

St Helier

JE2 4WP

01534 767037

(call for info, but no telephone sales!)

Come by, get information, read the programme, buy tickets, meet the team, volunteer, hang out. We love you and we can't wait to see you.

And from September 18th you can also pick up your festival pass (if you've bought one already) and passholder tickets.

Bordee d'Branchage 2010

2010-09-11T12:40:00.009+01:00

Branchage's Saturday night party, La Bordee d'Branchage, tends to be pretty good. Ok, it's always been really good. In 2008 the party was headlined by Paloma Faith, in 2009 we had Kitty Daisy & Lewis and The Correspondents - wise choices that went down a charm. But with great wisdom comes great responsibility... the responsibility to make each year's Bordee d'Branchage even more cracking than the last. Bashful Branchage isn't one to blow its own trumpet, but oh my have we got a corker coming up this year (on Saturday 25th).

Victorian. Boardwalk. Burlesque.
Come aboard the Victorian Seaside Sideshow... Laugh at the Pierrots, learn to Charleston, play the coconut shy, sing-along with the Vaudeville dame, until... The rabble of gypsy musicians descend with their epic Balkan brass refrains.

Have a peek at headliners the Ziveli Orkestar, who'll be coming over from Paris, here:

Then there's 1920's flappers the Bee's Knees, Plaster of Paris and aerial artist Geneva Foster-Gluck (picture above) as well as over 20 other walkabout performers working their magic.

Exciiiiiiiiitement.

Dress Code: Victorian Burlesque Dames, Gypsy Kings and merry Sailors

More info: http://www.branchagefestival.com/programme/parties/la-bordee-d-branchage/

Branchage School presents... Feature Directors Lab 2010

2010-08-24T17:39:00.000+01:00

www.branchagefestival.com/school/

Branchage School is a week-long residential film course hosted on the Island of Jersey, immediately before the lively Branchage Film Festival.

This year Branchage School presents Feature Directors Lab. The course is aimed at filmmakers looking to make their first or second feature film. The Directors will be tutored and mentored to develop and shoot their own projects whilst in Jersey, and given the opportunity to attend masterclasses with highly acclaimed professionals in development, production, and beyond.

Taking place from 17th - 23rd September, immediately before the start of Branchage International Film Festival (23-26th), accommodation will be at the 4-star Hotel de France, classes will take place in Jersey's capital St Helier. An optional Transcendental Meditation course will also run alongside the Film School. This will involve 20 mins of meditative practice at the start and end of each day, helping students who participate to delve deeper into our ‘collective consciousness’ to access the fundamental pool from which creative ideas can flood.

The course is intended for twelve students from all walks of life. Students can be: graduates from a variety of areas with a diversity of skills, short filmmakers, those working in the industry already

The Tutors: PAT STONE – TM TEACHER, KATE LEYS – STORY / SCRIPT DEVELOPMENT, GILLIES MACKINNON – DIRECTOR, ORLANDO SEALE - ACTOR, REBECCA MARK-LAWSON – PRODUCER, PETER STRICKLAND – DIRECTOR

£1550.00 Tuition Fees and Shared twin room (includes all transport, food and accommodation) / £1200.00 Tuition Fees for Non-Residential

Free Festival Pass to Film School Students.

For more info email: school@branchagefestival.com

Branchage 2010 launched this week - ooooh!

2010-08-12T22:51:00.001+01:00

The good ship Branchage 2010 officially launched on Tuesday evening, setting sail on (slightly stormy) waters from Shoreditch Church, on a festive voyage across the seas of cinema towards Jersey shores.

(Too much?)

To mark the launch of the 2010 programme, we put on a big old bash, decking the Church with gorgeous blooming flowers (cut fresh from a Jersey garden and ferried over) and handing out pots and pots of Jersey Dairy Ice Cream. And, well frankly, booze.

As the light faded on a rainy East London evening, we were treated to an incredible set from The Oscillation, playing out across a dark Shoreditch Church, below the mesmeric oil-based projections of visual maestro Julian Hand.

How do you top that? By finishing up the evening watching some slightly sloshed industry folk throwing shapes on the dancefloor to the sounds of the gorgeous Molly Carroll's DJ set.

There was something else about the evening too... the point of it all... Branchage announced programme highlights and got tongues wagging with talk of all the treats in store at this year's festival.

It's all going up on our brand new, and we think rather nice, website: www.branchagefestival.com.

Check. It. Out.

Please. x

Calling all Jersey-based Musicians. Come in all Jersey-based Musicians.

2010-08-12T11:09:00.000+01:00

We’re looking for an array of musicians and composers to perform at Branchage Jersey International Film Festival 2010.

Whether you play as a solo artist or in a big band, classical or electronica, young or old, we need to hear from you.

In the past we’ve had Cally Noel with her collection of medieval instruments playing around the grounds of Mont Orgeuil Castle. A Banjo Jamboree at Classic Herd Barn and an Eastern influenced, heavy metal guitar solo from Sean Conway, but we’re still on the look out for more of the talent that Jersey has to offer as well as musicians from neighbouring Channel Islands too.

This year, we will be having local musicians perform before each of the screenings in various weird and wonderful venues around the island. We’re also on the hunt for anyone who is interested in making soundtracks. Successful applicants will also have the chance to perform in the famous Branchage Spiegel Tent.

If you think you’ve got what it takes to perform at Branchage this year please get in touch by sending an email to nina@branchagefestival.com

Within the email please write a few sentences about yourself and some examples of your music with BRANCHAGE MUSIC 2010 as the subject. MP3s, MySpace links and YouTube footage of live performances will all be considered.

Look, see these happy musicians who played at Branchage 2009. Just a few of many...

Branchage Blooms

2010-08-10T16:37:00.004+01:00

The time has arrived, behold, Branchage Festival 2010 - Official Trailer.

Those who have followed the trailers for the last couple of years (think lots of cows, Mrs De La Haye, hedge-cutting, Jersey vistas) - we hope you approve of the new direction. It's 2010 and Branchage is blooming.

Tell us what you think,

Branchage loves you
x

Branchage Film Festival Trailer 2010 from Branchage Film Festival on Vimeo.

A week since Gainsbourg event: heart still a-flutter

2010-08-09T00:27:00.000+01:00

Last Friday night proved quite the Gallic love-in... Gainsbourg's music, Gainsbourg on film, Gainsbourg behind the camera. Gainsbourg, je t'adore.

Branchage and the Curzon celebrated Serge late into the night, lulled into that loving feeling by Hige Club's performance of 'Charlotte Forever' and then shaken out of the stupor by the brilliant (if challenging) Gainsbourg feature debut JE T'AIME MOI NON PLUS.

Ooh la la. Risque.

Branchage in the Telegraph

2010-07-26T17:57:00.000+01:00

If you didn't get a chance yesterday you should hunt down a copy of Sundays Telegraph, head home, make yourself comfortable, open the free magazine 'Stella,' flick through to page 54 and there it is....'A Girl's Guide to...JERSEY.' They've called Jersey the 'Why didn't we come here sooner?' island and they've given Branchage a sparkling mention!

Good to know that the lovely people at 'Stella' are on board with Branchage and with Jersey! Thanks Stella!

Only 2 chances left to see Guardian 'Pick of the Week' Isolation

2010-07-26T14:38:00.000+01:00

Closing up an extraordinary run of performances at Picturehouse Cinemas around the UK, there are now only 2 dates left to catch ISOLATION with its live soundtrack.

It's the Guardian's Pick of the Week, and may well be the most poignant, beautiful and important cinema experience you'll have this year (or next, or the one after maybe).

Buy tickets for the Ritzy screening in Brixton tomorrow night (Tuesday 27th July) or in Brighton on Sunday 1st August.

More waxing lyrical about this event here: http://branchageblogage.blogspot.com/2010/07/isolation-tours-uk-not-to-be-missed.html

Guardian link here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/jul/10/3d-film-festival-greenwich-indian

Tickets for Brixton here: http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/Ritzy_Picturehouse/film/Isolation_Live_Soundtrack/

Tickets for Brighton here: http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema/Duke_Of_Yorks/film/Isolation_Live_Soundtrack/

What more could you wish for?

x

Gainsbourg, je t'aime

2010-07-22T15:45:00.000+01:00

Bonjour tout le monde!

Do you like a little Serge? Who doesn't, the man charms you like you're a snake and he's got a pipe and a basket. A pipe and a basket made of pure solid love that is. Oh, and also he's got that amazing back catalogue of music, acting, directing, writing, photography...

To co-incide with the release of the new Gainsbourg bio-pic, unexpectedly titled 'Gainsbourg', Branchage is celebrating all things Serge at the Curzon Soho on July 30th - Joignez-nous pour celebrer la Bourg!

Join us for a night of film and live music - we've got it all going on late into the night. A selection of Serge Gainbourg's video performances, Hige Club (a collective formed especially for this one-off event) perform Charlotte Gainsbourg's gallic album 'Charlotte Forever', penned by her father, and a live performance, by Andy Philip and Tim Rose, of Gainsbourg songs selected from his massive oeuvre. Then it's into the screening room for a rare big-screen showing of Serge's 1976 directorial debut, the highly controversial JE T'AIME MOI NON PLUS - risque! - starring Jane Birkin and infamous Warhol superstar Joe Dallesandro.

And here's the real kicker... Joann Sfar, director of said new Gainsbourg bio-pic, 'Gainsbourg', will be in attendance.

Read more, buy tickets, appreciez, ICI!

Latitudinal

2010-07-20T22:43:00.001+01:00

Heady days in the Suffolk sun. Team Branchage has been sampling the delights (and delightful it was) of Latitude Festival this weekend.

And it wasn't just a jolly... Branchage brought Amiina's live soundtrack to Lotte Reiniger's fairytale animations to the Film & Music Arena. And it was a packed out Arena.

What a pleasure to bring an original Branchage commission and a festival favourite to Latitude. As well previously performed scores to Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, Latitude commissioned a soundtrack to a third classic Reiniger piece - Aladdin.

The haunting live music from Amiina alongside those flickering marionette projections enchanted the crowds. Here's to all that filmy, musicy loveliness.

In other news - peopled played scrabble. That's latitude for you.

ISOLATION - unmissable tour starts tomorrow

2010-07-13T17:36:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow is the first performance of ISOLATION, on their UK tour. This remarkable documentary, based around the staggering statistic that a quarter of ex-soldiers end up on the streets when they return home, is widely thought of as the most important documentary of this past year.

Luke Seomore, co- director of the film, will accompany the screening with a live interpretation of his original score alongside musicians Michael Garrad and David Stephens. Tomorrow nights performance at the Greenwich picturehouse is set to be a profoundly moving evening and we urge you all to be there!

Click here for more information about tomorrow nights performance

Don't worry if you can't make it tomorrow night they will be up and down the country over the next 2 weeks:

15th Screen on the Green London
17th Fact Liverpool
18th Tyneside Newcastle
19th Hyde Park Leeds
20th York
21st Cambridge
22nd Oxford

ISOLATION tours the UK - not to be missed

2010-07-06T17:57:00.013+01:00

There's now a chance for people around the country to see arguably the most important and moving UK documentary of the last year, ISOLATION, with a live soundtrack accompaniment, as it's set to tour Picturehouse cinemas around the country.

Atmospheric and impressionistic, this remarkable film follows photographer and ex-paratrooper Stuart Griffiths as he travels across the country documenting the physical and emotional scars of life after the army, uncovering the personal and controversial stories of young war veterans; a quarter of whom end up sleeping rough after returning from duty. This beautifully shot and incredibly moving film very carefully highlights an often all too invisible group.

To accompany the film, co-director Luke Seomore will be performing a live interpretation of his original score alongside musicians Michael Garrad and David Stephens.

The film and Seomore's pitch-perfect live accompaniment come together to make a profoundly moving and not-to-be-missed event.

The tour (14th July to 1st August) will take film and live soundtrack to London, Brighton, Cambridge, Liverpool, Oxford and York.

More details, dates and tickets here:
http://www.picturehouses.co.uk/cinema//film/Isolation_Live_Soundtrack/

Branchage Passes on sale in Jerseyyyy

2010-06-29T12:13:00.000+01:00

As of yesterday, June 28th 2010, the Branchage Pass is officially on sale. Yes, you can go into a publicly-accessible shop and buy a simple pass that will grant you free access to screenings and events at Branchage 2010. Our excitement knows no bounds.

Passes are currently on sale in Jersey at the Jersey Tourism Visitor Centre and the iQ Apple Store, Burrard Street. This is just for starters - more vendors across Jersey, the UK and France to be announced soon, plus online pass sales coming your way.

The wildly-good-value June price is £39, in July it goes up to a still-fantastic £49, August will be a bargain-bagging £59, September it becomes a more-than-reasonable £69 and finally during the festival you will pay a still-UTTERLY-worth-it-but-wish-i'd-moved-a-bit-quicker £79.

Early birds catch worms; get down to Jersey Tourism or the iQ Apple Store today or tomorrow to bag that £39 steal!

2 weeks to go - send your submissions Branchage-ward

2010-06-22T14:42:00.000+01:00

If the past few months have flown by as quickly for you as they have in the Branchage office, you may be surprised to learn that today (June 22nd) is the Regular Deadline for entries to Branchage 2010.

But don't fear, there is still one precious fortnight to go until the special extended Late Deadline. So get cracking and get those films submitted by: Thursday 8th July, Thursday 8th July, Thursday 8th July...

Submission is hassle free via withoutabox. For fees, guidelines and entry, click here...

Without your films, the world of Branchage would be a far less dazzling and diverse place - so the Programming Team can't wait to see your work.

Call for Submissions! MeetMarket at Sheffield Doc/Fest

2010-06-14T10:55:00.000+01:00

2010 MeetMarket Applications open until September 1st for pitching new documentary, factual and cross-platform projects
The call for applications for the 2010 MeetMarket at Sheffield Doc/Fest is now open online for 3 months until Wednesday 1 September here - http://www.sheffdocfest.com/meetmarket
MeetMarket* is Doc/Fest's pitching initiative designed to match documentary, factual and cross-platform makers' most innovative project ideas with UK and international buyers. For more information on MeetMarket see here - http://www.sheffdocfest.com/view/meetmarket
"The most effortless and efficient way to meet numerous key commissioners and decision-makers over two days." 2009 MeetMarket Participant
This year, we will select approximately 60 projects to pitch, all of whom will have one-to-one meeting with key funders and decision-makers match-made and scheduled.
Projects can be at any stage from early development to post-production, and don’t need to have financing secured. Producers can be from anywhere in the world and we welcome international submissions.
Projects can also be in any genre of documentary/factual, from factual entertainment through to art/installation documentaries. We especially welcome cross-platform projects and this year will have even more devoted cross-platform decision-makers across the whole Doc/Fest marketplace.
If you are selected you are offered the opportunity to request meetings with, and pitch to, a high number of decision makers – last year 139 in total, and this year with over 70 already confirmed. To see how much they enjoyed the MeetMarket experience last year watch the film on this page - http://sheffdocfest.com/view/meetmarket
This year we have confirmed participation already from over 70 funders and decision-makers including BBC, Channel 4, ITV, Five, Arte France, ARTE ZDF Irish Film Board, RTE, VPRO, TRT, Gucci Tribeca Film Fund, PBS, Sundance Institute, ETV, DR TV, YLE, TG4, ICA Films, Dogwoof, Soda Pictures, and AVRO. They represent creative documentary, science, history, arts, theatrical, online and broadcast distribution, sales agents, interactive media, and more beyond. To see the full list of who is coming look here - http://sheffdocfest.com/buyers
MeetMarket generated over £10m in negotiation in 2009, with the matchmaking personalised format meaning you can discuss your project creatively in detail. In total, there were over 1000 matchmade meetings in MeetMarket 2009.
The application process requires a synopsis, one-minute teaser, headline budget figures, and biographical information on participants. For full advice and tips on how to make your application the very best, see our MeetMarket advice on http://www.sheffdocfest.com/view/meetmarket.
Submissions for the the 2010 MeetMarket are subject to an administration fee of £10 plus VAT per project.
SUBMIT YOUR 2009 MEETMARKET APPLICATION ONLINE NOW AT http://www.sheffdocfest.com/meetmarket. Submissions close Wednesday 1 September, 2010. For more info on MeetMarket, and to enquire about applying and whether your projects are suitable, contact Doc/Fest's Marketplace Producer Charlie Phillips.
MeetMarket is kindly supported by the MEDIA programme of the European Union.
*MeetMarket is based on an original initiative of the Australian Film Commission (AFC) and The Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC).

Christopher Lakeman Arts Foundation launches in memory of devoted advocate

2010-06-02T16:53:00.000+01:00

Following Advocate Christopher Lakeman’s death in February this year, a charitable trust has been established in his memory.

As a member of the Jersey States government from 1999 until 2004, Senator Lakeman championed a host of human rights issues. Christopher was a former chairman of Jersey Opera House, the island's Danish Consul and a consultant at the law firm of Le Gallais and Luce.

“Christopher was an enthusiastic patron of the arts in Jersey and one of his most recent passions was the Branchage Film Festival, of which he had been appointed chairman. In the short term the trustees intend to implement ideas that Christopher wished to develop before his death, primarily to make the festival accessible to local primary school children. In the longer term, the foundation will consider further projects, depending on the donations received”, says trustee Charles Pitter.

Mr Lakeman was a very caring individual and he always made time for those who were in difficulty.

Jersey solicitors Charles Pitter and Paul Scally, along with Xanthe Hamilton, are trustees of the Foundation.

Donations can be made by cheque made payable to the “Christopher Lakeman Arts Foundation” c/o Greystones, Le Mont de Rozel, St Martin, Jersey JE3 6AN.

2010-05-27T10:17:00.005+01:00

Running parallel to the Tricycle Theatre's focus on women in British politics, the extraordinarily lovely Tricycle Cinema are running a Women, Power and Politics Film Festival from 13th June to 27th June.

The Cinema will screen international documentaries with discussions, debates and Q&As celebrating politicised women and the grassroots campaigns that have united them in their struggles for change globally.

It's an amazing programme of inspiring docs from around the world.

Check out the full programme here: www.tricycle.co.uk/festivals/women-power-and-politics-film-festival/

Two opportunities from Britdoc - get busy!

2010-05-18T10:28:00.009+01:00

1. The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and the Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program announce the call for entries for the 2010 edition of the Good Pitch UK

The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and Sundance Institute Documentary Film Program (DFP) are delighted to announce the second edition of the Good Pitch UK will be held in London on September 6 & 7th 2010.

The Good Pitch brings together inspiring social-purpose film projects and a group of expert participants from charities, foundations, brands and media to form powerful alliances around groundbreaking films. ‘It’s a perfect marriage. NGOs get access to some of the world’s best filmmakers, and filmmakers get access to research, distribution and funding.’ The Guardian.
The call for film projects is now open – deadline 28^th June, 2010. For more information, trailer and to apply visit http://britdoc.org/goodpitch
For more information contact: elise@britdoc.org

2. Films For Good Workshop - 23rd-25th July - Call for Applicants

The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and Working Films UK are delighted to announce the third annual Films for Good Workshop weekend. Follow in the footsteps of hard-hitting, powerful films and previous workshop alumni - Sundance and Berlin Winner Wasteland, the Inconvenient Truth of the seas End of the Line and cinema hit and surveillance sensation Erasing David.

Join this inspiring and informative weekend workshop designed to create campaigns and identify a range of potential outreach partners - including leading non-profits and social entrepreneurs as well as corporate and branding agencies.

The Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation and Working Films designed this workshop to create effective strategic outreach campaigns around documentary films. Working Films co-founders Robert West and Judith Helfand and their team have masterminded campaigns behind feature docs such as Rory Kennedy's Emmy Award-winning The Ghosts of Abu Ghraib and Helfand's Everything's Cool resulting in significant shifts in the marketplace, public and political opinion in the US. Working Films' new full-time partnership with Channel 4 BRITDOC Foundation brings this high-level expertise to the UK filmmaking community.

Applications Close: Monday 28 June, 2010

For information and to apply – http://britdoc.org/real_good/filmsforgood

For further information, contact Sarah Mosses sarahm@britdoc.org

Branchage at Sexbeat - part of Stag & Dagger

2010-05-06T18:34:00.004+01:00

As part of the astoundingly good line up at this year's multi-venue extravaganza Stag & Dagger, Branchage is joining forces with Sexbeat (well if you can't sexbeat 'em, join 'em eh?) to add film and visuals to five hot live bands. The chosen filmmakers all have connections with Branchage (like they've had work screened at the festival, or they've had a hand in running it at some stage... that kinda thing).

If you're not familiar with Stag & Dagger, it's a 'one-ticket-gives-access-to-all' annual festival taking place in London on Friday 21st May. Your ticket gives you access to 20 official venues around East London where you'll find over 100 of the best new live music acts, djs, art shows and film screenings. The full line-up's amazing... but don't go to any of that stuff, come to Cafe 1001 off Brick Lane for Branchage's bit. It'll blow your socks off, quite literally.*

* not literally.

To entice you to come down to see Sexbeat (and Branchage) at Cafe 1001, here's the tantalizing list of live bands and filmmakers who will be providing your aural and visual pleasure...

Pulled Apart By Horses - filmmaker Carla MacKinnon

Banjo or Freakout - filmmakers Helena & Jake Astbury

Tweakbird - filmmakers Gemma Atkinson & Fred Grace

Friendship - filmmaker Kate Jessop

Wax Fang - filmmaker Bella Fenning

Quite simply, it's going to be aces. There's biogs of each of the filmmakers on the facebook event page if you'd like to know more.

Stag & Dagger tickets are available from www.seetickets.com here - and remember, one ticket gets you into all the venues that night. Here's a tip: buy your ticket online in advance, because it's cheaper than buying on the door.

x

Potato Salad Contest: RECIPE 11 - Dawne Langford (TV editor and food enthusiast)

2010-05-05T19:20:00.000+01:00

And one for good luck...

Here's some tips from across the atlantic...

'THE AMERICAN'

Boil some Jersey Royals
Cube them
Stay away from nasty mayo and use things like dijon mustard, cider vinegar, curry powder
Have crunchy things in it because too much mushy texture is gnar-gnar
Crunchy things include fried capers, pickles that have been diced, cucumber, pretzels? evil hot peppers
Fresh herbs are also tasty in potato salad
And a tip... soak the potatoes overnight in water with bouillon

Potato Salad Contest: RECIPE 10 - Simon Chambers (Filmmaker)

2010-05-05T18:01:00.000+01:00

From the wonderful Simon Chambers. We call this recipe...

'THE DOCUMENTARIST'

Put a splash of oil in a pan and fry up some turmeric powder and coriander seeds or any other spices that you fancy - just for about 20 seconds.
Add boiled potatoes and any other cooked veggies that you like. You could put onions or garlic if you want.

Potato Salad Contest: RECIPE 9 - Melissa Hogenboom (Journaliste)

2010-05-05T08:44:00.000+01:00

"JERSEYLICIOUS"

Green beans

Sweetcorn

Bacon

Red onion

Fresh dill

Mmmmmmmm.

Potato Salad Contest: RECIPE 8 - Emma Rozanski (Filmmaker)

2010-05-03T21:38:00.002+01:00

'ANTIPODEAN POTATO SALAD'

5 Large Potatoes
3 or 4 Green Apples
A few large sticks of Celery
5 or 6 hard-boiled Eggs
Mayonnaise

Boil potatoes (peel if desired) and leave to cool. Hard boil eggs, peel and leave to cool.
When the above are cool to the touch, chop potatoes into small chunks. Slice Eggs.
Peel and chop apples (similar size to potatoes). Chop celery into small bits.
Mix all ingredients into large bowl. Add and stir in mayo to taste.

Mighty fine I say!

Potato Salad Contest: RECIPE 7 - Ben Blaine (Charlie Productions)

2010-05-01T13:10:00.001+01:00

'POMME ON POMME DE TERRE'

For reasons of health and safety I had to eat sausages last night so I made up this recipe to go with them. On the grounds that sausages like apples I threw caution to the wind and this is roughly what happened.

Boil a bag of Jersey Royal potatoes exactly as it says on the back, bringing them to the boil and then simmering for 15 minutes. 15 minutes feels like 5 weeks but it's surprisingly perfect.

Meanwhile peel and core an apple and cut it into chunks. I used a Braeburn but anything with a bit of bite will do. But if you bring any Pink Lady to the table I'll know and there'll be trouble. I once went to an food related event where the people responsible for the Pink Lady apple were selling the damn things out of a bright pink mini. They were all dressed in pink. And they were ladies. It was a glimpse into a nightmarish vision of my own private five-a-day hell. So anyway, you've peeled an apple.

Add some salad leaves. I'd like to pretend that I went out into the garden and plucked them fresh. I got them from a bag. I don't even know what they all were though there was definitely some Rosso action on the lettuce front. To be honest I don't think they're that essential to this salad but there was only a few left and if I didn't eat them now I'd have to throw them away or give them to the rabbits and the have an entire garden to eat as it is.

Right, now comes the one bit I was proud of. I took a quantity of dried rosemary, an amount of maldon rock salt (yes Jenny, you're dead right, it does matter), an amount of black pepper corns and a clove of raw garlic and I put them all in a pestle and ground them into a paste. My only recollection of quantities was - much more than I intended (rosemary), a fair amount for a man who likes a lot of black pepper (black pepper), as much as my heart and my conscience will allow (salt) and a very small one (garlic).

To this divinely scented paste I added a teaspoon of Taylors Original English Mustard and a tablespoon of Mayonnaise.

I then put all of those things together with the drained potatoes and discovered that I'd burnt the sausages. This though actually worked in my favour because it made the whole thing smell and taste like the most perfect first barbecue of the year. Smokey, sweet, tangy and hearty it was the perfect thing to eat on a spring evening that had turned surprisingly cold.

Then Polly the dog caught a rabbit in the garden and would not be deterred from eating it inside. Oh yeah, said her dark little eyes as she glared at me from over the corpse of her velveteen victim, two can play at this cooking shit. I call this Lapin Al Fresco...

(For decency's sake I've photographed only my dinner, not the dog's)

Potato Salad Contest: RECIPE 6 - FleaCircusDir (Animator)

2010-05-01T13:07:00.001+01:00

'POT-O-CHIVE'

New potatoes
Mayo
Freshly cut chives from the garden

boom

Potato Salad Contest: RECIPE 5 - Charlie Phillips (Sheffield Doc/Fest)

2010-04-30T10:52:00.002+01:00

'THE VEGAN'

About 10 medium to small potatoes, not over-boiled, chopped rustic style into chunks

Red onion

Celery

Spring onions - lots of them

Dollop of dijon mustard

Dollop of eggless mayo, but not too much

Some kale

Some olive oil

A sprinkling of Engevita (yeast flakes) to give it a light fake cheesy taste

Salt and pepper

A sprinkling of sweet paprika

Toss it all together, see what happens...

Potato Salad Contest: RECIPE 4 - Fiona Fletcher (Branchage)

2010-04-30T10:28:00.003+01:00

'SPUDNIK SWEETHEART'

A Jar of artichoke hearts (use a couple of tablespoons of the oil as dressing)
Splash of balsamic vinegar
Capers
Salt and Pepper

(A front runner for the best name competition. 'Spud'nik Sweet'heart'. inspired!)

Potato Salad Contest: RECIPE 3 - Chloe Roddick (Edinburgh Film Festival)

2010-04-29T17:39:00.007+01:00

'THE MRS RODDICK SPECIAL'

This is my Mum's Secret Potato Salad Recipe.

This is the best potato salad you will ever eat. As you eat it, you'll weep to think of all the other sub-par potato salads you have eaten in your life. It will be like emerging from the darkness, into the light.

Ingredients:

Jersey Royals (peeled)

Mayonnaise (FULL-FAT or FORGET IT) (I dunno, loads really)

Spring Onions (a bunch, chopped)

Red Onions (1 large, diced)
Celery (diced)

Walnuts (a few handfuls, roughly hewn)
Greek yoghurt (one spoonful)

Allspice (to taste)

Paprika (to taste)

A pinch of mild chili powder

A pinch of dill
A dash of worcester sauce

and a LOAD (nearly a whole block, if you can handle it) of parmesan.

Boil potatoes till soft. Add everything. Mix up. REVEL. x

Potato Salad Contest: RECIPE 2 - Jenny Horwell (Branchage)

2010-04-29T17:36:00.006+01:00

'THE PURIST'

Jersey Royals (steam them, takes 10 minutes, amazing)
Extra Virgin olive oil (CRUCIAL: add the oil to the chopped potatoes while they're still hot)
Spring onions (chopped)
Maldon Sea Salt (yes it matters)
Black pepper.

The picture ain't pretty, but it tasted beautiful.

Potato Salad Contest: RECIPE 1 - Xanthe Hamilton

2010-04-29T17:03:00.003+01:00

'THE DIRECTOR'

To kick us off on the Jersey Royals potato salad recipe bonanza, this creation is from Branchage Festival Director Miss Xanthe Hamilton:

Jersey Royals - skin on

Fennel - thinly sliced

Mint

Lemon Juice

Olive Oil

Salt & Pepper

Jersey Royalty

2010-04-29T16:59:00.001+01:00

DO YOU HAVE THE ULTIMATE POTATO SALAD RECIPE?

At the British Sea Power event on Tuesday night we had a tattie-tastic gift for everyone in the audience. To celebrate Jersey Royals coming into season, The Jersey Royal Company themselves sent us 800 bags of 'taters to give away... free! It was a real spud-studded event (groan).

With the leftover bags sitting in our office, our minds have turned to potato salad, and a few variations have already been made. But debate rages as to the ultimate potato salad ingredients.

And so an idea forms...

A potato salad recipe contest! Oh yes!

Email your favourite Jersey Royal potato salad ingredients and we'll post 'em right here on the blog. Are you a purist? Experimenter? Fan of fusion? What combo blows your socks off?

Send the recipe to jenny@branchagefestival.com.

British Sea Power-ed

2010-04-29T16:52:00.000+01:00

British Sea Power blew us away at our live soundtrack event on Tuesday evening (a joint production between Branchage and The Quietus).

The combination of the incredible interior of the Union Chapel, a huge suspended screen and amazing acoustics made an inspired setting for the Man of Aran live soundtrack.

It was intense, and stunning, and joyous.

Unforgettable. Huge thanks to everyone who helped us to put this event together!

Incredible band + Epic 1929 filmic treasure + Stunning venue = Spine-tinglingly great event

2010-04-08T18:16:00.003+01:00

Huge excitement about the upcoming British Sea Power live soundtrack performance at the Union Chapel. This event was such a mesmerising highlight of Branchage 2009 in Jersey, and we can't wait to see (and hear) it inside the Union Chapel.

Here's some details...

Tuesday 27th April

Union Chapel

Compton Avenue (by Upper Street)

London N1 2XD

Doors: 7pm

Support from the wonderful Rose Elinor Dougall

Tickets £15.50

snap 'em up right here: http://tinyurl.com/yjxxu7u

CAN'T WAIT A WHOLE 19 DAYS FOR THIS.

See you there x

Submit to Branchage!

2010-04-02T16:09:00.004+01:00

We are delighted and excited to announce that submissions are open for Branchage Festival 2010!

Come one, come all, enter your films for consideration. We're accepting all genres, all styles, all subjects and all lengths.

Each year, the contribution that your films make to the festival is just enormous. Without your films, the world of Branchage would be a far less dazzling and diverse place - so the Programming Team can't wait to see your work.

Submission is hassle free via withoutabox. For fees, guidelines and entry, click here...

The early bird deadline is coming up on 29th April, but the main deadline isn't until 22nd June, and even then you still have another fortnight until the late deadline on 8th July.

Get cracking, submit films.

www.branchagefestival.com

Love from branchage.

Guerillas in the East End

2010-03-26T16:01:00.007Z

Kino London's 3 Day Filmmaking Challenge

Kino London partners with East End Film Festival in April to lay a challenge at the feet of London filmmakers - a 3-day session of guerilla filmmaking with the resulting shorts presented at a very special screening on Tuesday 27 April at Vibe Live.

Filmmakers are invited to take part in the East End Kino challenge, kicking off with a production meeting at midday on Saturday 24 April at the festival's filmmakers centre, just moments away from Brick Lane. Filmmakers will announce a project they intend to shoot, along with needs of cast, crew, locations or equipment. The projects announced that Saturday morning will go from the pre-production to completion as a brand new short ready to screen the following Tuesday.

Each film will be set in London's East End and feature a signature location handed out on the day.

The launch event is free and open to anyone who wants take part - although signup is essential as spots are limited.

For more information or to register interest contact sam@kinolondon.com

http://www.kinolondon.com
http://www.eastendfilmfestival.com/

Submissions Open for the 3rd Babelgum Online Film Festival

2010-03-19T12:48:00.000Z

In response to the success of its previous editions helmed by Oscar-nominated director Spike Lee, independent web and mobile video content platform Babelgum is pleased to announce its call for entries for the 3rd Babelgum Online Film Festival (BOFF3).

Official partners of BOFF3 are Shooting People, the world's largest network of independent filmmakers. Joining forces, both organisations hope to to celebrate and reward the very best in international independent short filmmaking by providing exposure and cash awards of up to $6,000.

Deadline for uploads is 28 March, however, filmmakers can submit work from any year of production and there are no restrictions on whether the film has been previously distributed or entered into any offline or online film festival.

To find out more, visit Babelgum.

Branchage at True/False Film Festival

2010-03-16T15:26:00.005Z

As mentioned on an earlier post, Branchage's Carla MacKinnon went to True/False Film Festival in Missouri, and all she brought back was this EXCELLENT video of the festival!

We love those cats, and the two films that Branchage screened there both went down a storm - four sold-out screenings in fact! x

Brilliant competition from Mofilm | Even better deal with Shooting People

2010-03-04T13:49:00.001Z

Last month, Shooting People pulled out all the stops to encourage their filmmakers to enter Mofilm's Barcelona Ad Competition. It paid off, with eight Shooting People members winning prizes, two coming top and one winning the Grand Prize; this filmmaker is now off to make an ad with ‘Avatar’ producer Jon Landau.

As one competition ends, another opens - this time, winners will be flown to New York for Tribeca Film Festival and pick up a host of cash prizes. To enter, filmmakers must make an ad of less than 90 seconds for one of six brands including Nokia, Nature Valley and Best Buy.

Mofilm have again offered Shooting People members an EXCLUSIVE OFFER - all members who enter go into a draw to win a brand new Apple MacBook.

Not a member? No problem. Claim your free trial membership at shootingpeople.org/mofilm.

DEADLINE: 6 April 2010

Branchage's Best Friend - True/False Film Festival is just days away

2010-02-23T00:41:00.003Z

Steal a car, invent a jet pack, build an aeroplane... do whatever you have to do to get yourself to Missouri for Feb 25 - 28 for the True/False Film Festival. It's everything you dreamt a film festival could be. Really.

Screening the documentaries that captured imaginations at Sundance and Toronto as well as pulling out its own premieres and showcasing those 'i-caught-this-amazing-little-doc-at-a-festival' gems, True/False's programme is brimful of must-see films and cracking entertainment.

Branchage and True/False are really good friends. We want to hold their hand actually. And we get to play at each other's houses sometimes. At Branchage 2009 True/False presented a clutch of superb docs and co-founder David Wilson crossed the Atlantic (and the Channel) to be in Jersey for the festival, talking at panel events, hosting Q&As and hitting the dancefloor at the Spiegeltent parties.

T/F's David Wilson interviews Borut Strel at Branchage 2009

And now it's our turn to repay the favour, sending Branchage Producer Carla MacKinnon over to Missouri and screening a couple of utterly brilliant British docs.

First off, there's the absolute belter It Felt Like A Kiss, brought to True/False by director Adam Curtis. Curtis has made his name in BBC Current Affairs programming for his searing, uncompromising documentaries that niggle away at those things you know about the media/ the government/ the people but had never quite faced. It Felt Like A Kiss is an absolute sucker punch of a film, built up entirely from montaged archive footage and an irresistible soundtrack of 60s nostalgia, and it's a damning criticism of Americana, the American Empire and the psychosis that lies beneath it.

'It Felt Like A Kiss' will screen on 26th, 27th and 28th Feb

Our second screening at the festival is a 'secret film'... that means we're not allowed to tell you what it is. We promised. But here are some clues: It's a British film with an 'American' subject, it's tinged with sadness but it's comedy genius, it's ..... Okay, that's enough of that. We give this film a double thumbs up and we're sure it's going to be big later this year.

Aside from the films we're presenting, 'Branchage Best Bits' from the film programme are: The British In Bed, Colony, The Tightrope and When We Were Boys... but it's hard to choose favourites from such a great programme.

And then there's all the other bits that put the 'festiv' in festival: legendary parties, live music, free panels and debates, a psychogeographic walking tour (I know!), a banquet, a live documentary gameshow... they've got everything short of a parade! Hold up... there's also a blinking parade!

Branchage is a-quiver with excitement. Feast your eyes on all the details here and start wending your way to Missouri.

Branchage-eye view of what's coming up at Birds Eye View film fest

2010-02-11T16:02:00.001Z

Tickets have just gone on sale for Birds Eye View Film Festival 2010, a week of joy in venues across London, and there's just so much to look forward to in their lovely line up that all work has stopped in the Branchage office for 15 minutes of programme-analysing while we decide what we want to go to! Join us on this little adventure if you will...

We're partnering up with them to present a screening of Rough Aunties, but aside from that huge highlight, we're loving the look of their features from across the globe - US/Palestinian drama Amreeka, Austrian Jessica Hausner's hotly-tipped Lourdes and work from the new generation of Kenyan filmmakers Wanuri Kahiu and Judy Kibinge. And let's face it, we all want to check out Drew Barrymore's roller-tastic directorial debut Whip It (Ellen Page, Julliette Lewis, Drew Barrymore, Roller Derby - oh the joy!).

Being avid documentary fans, Team Branchage are also chomping at the bit to see Junior, which won the audience award at the UK's biggest documentary film festival Sheffield Doc/Fest, and parrrrticularly interested in She Is The Matador about Spanish tradition and (it's all in the title really) female matadors.

Then there's their brilliant Music Video showcase presented by Miranda Sawyer (Branchage hearts the Sawyer) and their whole Innovation Strand which enlightens us on cutting edge new technologies every year... and which we then discuss nonchalantly at dinner parties for months to come.

Tons more, may have to post about the Susanne Bier masterclass and retrospective and the Mira Calix / Lotte Reiniger live score separately, once we've got our breath back.

Phew, good to get that all off our chests. And now back to work...

xx

Paging Branchage, come in, Branchage?

2010-02-08T12:12:00.000Z

The Branchage website has caught a winter virus and is currently sick in bed. The doctor is seeing it now, and it should be back on its feet in the next day or so.

If anyone has been trying to track us down at www.branchagefestival.com and had problems, please persevere! It's a temporary hitch that should be resolved soon. In the meantime, please feel free to contact us here, or through our facebook page (just search 'Branchage Jersey').

Get well soon Branchage website, x

This video is Animagical!

2010-01-19T13:49:00.010Z

Finally it's here...

If you missed the beautiful multi-sensory vision of Amiina performing their live soundtrack to the fairy tale silhouette animations of Lotte Reiniger in Shoreditch Church in December, don't despair. Watch Garry Brown's video of Cinderella below. It'll knock your post-Christmas socks off.

More tickets on sale for ISOLATION

2010-01-13T12:55:00.005Z

Due to the huge positive response to 'Isolation: A Live Soundtrack Event', the Roundhouse is putting on an extra performance at 5pm this Sunday the 17th and tickets are available now. Brought to you by Branchage and the Quietus in co-production with the Roundhouse, ISOLATION is a haunting and revealing portrait of the physical and emotional consequences of war.

Directed by Luke Seomore and Joseph Bull, this remarkable film follows photographer and ex-paratrooper Stuart Griffiths as he travels up and down the country uncovering the personal and controversial stories of young war veterans; a quarter of whom end up sleeping rough.

The film has received an overwhelmingly positive reception from both critics and audiences. Co-director Luke Seomore will be performing a live musical accompaniment, interpreting his original soundtrack alongside musicians Michael Garrard of the band Chips of the Poor and David Stephens of Stained Glass Heroes.

It's showing as part of the London Short Film Festival which we're loving this year. There's only a few days left so be sure to check out the other events and screenings.

See the trailer here: http://vimeo.com/8037742
Find out more and buy tickets here: http://www.roundhouse.org.uk/whats-on/productions/isolation-4447
The Quietus: http://thequietus.com/
Branchage: http://www.branchagefestival.com

Hope to see you Sunday, at 5pm or 8pm. x

One Week 'Til Animagica

2009-12-09T16:30:00.003Z

It's just over a week until Animagica and tickets are selling fast...

In just over seven days, Amiina will be performing their live soundtrack to Lotte Reiniger's magical animations in the beautiful, candle-lit surroundings of Shoreditch Church.

The ethereal Icelandic quartet will play an original and totally unique accompaniment to these exemplary fairy-tales using instruments ranging from violins to wine-glasses. They'll be supported by the brilliant up-and-comers Esben and the Witch and "indified gypsy jazz" duo Plaster of Paris.
The event was a sell-out success when we held it in Jersey last month, and this month's is set to be even more festive with mince pies and mulled wine. For more info check out the event's facebook page and see Amiina in action here at last month's Animagica.

To make sure you don't miss out on this sure-to-be magical event, head down to Rough Trade east or buy online from wegottickets.

Vote for your favourite 48-hour Road Movie

2009-11-29T00:51:00.005Z

Cast your mind back to the heady days of Branchage festival 2009; just below the calm festival exterior (ahem), there was a hive of activity and creativity bubbling away, in the form of the Vauxhall 48-Hour Road Movie Challenge.

The event saw seven teams of filmmakers rise to the challenge of writing, shooting and editing a road movie in just two days. The teams were a mixture of folk who flew over from the UK to take part and local Jersey filmmakers (some expert, some aspiring). These bright young stars (directors, camera operators, actors and the like) were guided by the award-winning filmmaking brothers Ben and Chris Blaine, who co-organised the event, and led by example by forming a madcap team themselves.

Each team was given a theme, drawn from a hat at the start of the 48 hours, and off they set, rambling around the island, trying to create a classic of the genre to a tight deadline.

Now's your chance to see what they came up with....

The films are now live on www.mishorts.com so get watching and don't forget to vote for your favourite. All the movies will be screened at the London Short Film Festival in January, where the winning film will be announced and its creators will receive a £1000 prize for their efforts. Plenty to budget their next masterpiece...

The Battle of Branchage

2009-11-15T15:04:00.001Z

The popularity of the Battle of Branchage video below is amazing - it's through the roof, getting re-posted, re-blogged and mercilessly viewed across the internet, and across the world.

It's no surprise either... take a look and you'll understand why people can't get enough of watching this video of the cutting edge projections that lit up Mont Orgueil Castle at Branchage in Oct 2009. The projections were put on by the combined forces of Seeper and Flat-E, and the totally site-specific spectacle was inspired by the crumbly Medieval glory of Gorey Castle, perched atop Mont Orgueil on the rocky Jersey coastline.

Watch it, send the link to your friends... few things make Team Branchage as happy as seeing people watch this video for the first time. Enjoy!

Battle of Branchage from seeper on Vimeo.

Branchage Festival announces 2009 Award Winners!

2009-10-13T16:55:00.005+01:00

We are delighted to announce the very deserving and talented Branchage Festival 2009 award winners:

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ISLANDERS AWARD (£2000)
Tell, directed by Laura Brocken

RUNNER UP ISLANDERS AWARD SUPPORTED BY LONDON FILM ACADEMY (£500 worth of LFA training)
Taken By The Air, directed by Mark Jones

Jury: Rebecca Mark-Lawson (Lizesize Pictures), John Davey (Spearpoint), James Mullighan (Shooting People), Michael Pearce (Director and winner of the Islanders Award 2008).

The Islanders Award Jury chose Laura Brocken (Tell) as the overall winner, taking home £2,000, whilst Mark Jones (Taken by the Air) as the runner up with £500 of London Film Academy Training. The jurors noticed with interest that both films were made with a good degree of collaboration, and that some of the others in the field suffered from a lack of that. To that end, John Davey and Thomas Dingle of the Jersey Arts Trust have additionally awarded both filmmakers bursaries to attend short film festivals on the mainland. Laura will be hosted at Encounters Short Film Festival in Bristol in Mid November, whilst Mark is invited to attend the London Short Film Festival in January.

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CUTTING HEDGE AWARD (£2000)
Girl Like Me, directed by Roland Jobson

Jury: Edward Fletcher (Soda Pictures), Claire Cook (BBC Film Network), Kobi Prempeh (Future Films & Projector TV)

"For it's compelling and arresting story, subtly handled by both director and excellent cast the Branchage Cutting Hedge Award Jury awarded Best Short Film to GIRL LIKE ME. We chose to award a Special Mention - PLANE DAYS for its notable cinematography and unique subject matter." - Jury member Kobi Prempeh, Future Films & Projector TV

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BUDDING TALENT AWARD (£2000)
Echoes, directed by Rob Brown

Jury: Gillies McKinnon (Director), Christine Bardsley (British Council), David Moats (The Quietus).
"An elegant film which says a great deal in a short space of time. The female leads are made into sympathetic, fleshed out characters with an economy of dialogue and image." - Jury member David Moats, The Quietus (pictured)

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MATTER DOCUMENTARY AWARD (£2000 + £1000 to a charity of filmmaker's choice):
Burma VJ, directed by Anders Østergaard

Jury: Simon Chinn (Producer), Rajesh Thind (OpenCircuit), Robert West (Working Films)
"In a strong line up of campaigning docs, the overwhelming consensus for the prize was Burma VJ. With its simple and unvarnished narrative, it offers - via the raw and powerful footage of this group of brave citizen journalists - a unique window on a closed and brutal regime and the heroic efforts to undermine it. Here's hoping that the cash prize will go some small way to boosting the urgent campaign to bring democracy to Burma's oppressed people." - Jury member Simon Chinn, Producer and Branchage Patron)

________________________

Filmmakers in attendance were handed their awards by Jury Members on the festival's Closing Night at the beautiful Jersey Opera House on 4th October.

Thanks to ALL the wonderful filmmakers who entered their films into the festival. The quality of films screening this year across all the events was very impressive and completely outstanding.

Choosing who the awards went to was a naturally a very tough one!...

Festival Director Xanthe Hamilton and James Mullighan (Creative Director of Shooting People) open the awards ceremony.

Director Laura Brocken receives the Islanders Award

Director Roland Jobson receives the Cutting Hedge Award

David Moats from The Quietus introduces the Budding Talent Award

Phil Burgin from Jersey Trust Company, one of the festival's key sponsors, introduces The Cutting Hedge Award.

Photos: Danny Evans

A peek into the Barclays Wealth Spiegeltent on Saturday Night

2009-10-13T12:14:00.002+01:00

Saturday Night was La Bordee D'Branchage, our exclusive evening of delightful musical lunacy and retro charm and our last party in the Barclays Wealth Spiegeltent (sad faces all round).

Whilst enjoying the event ourselves, we captured our jubilant festival crowd on video, who were undoubtedly in the mood for shaking the floorboards one last time. We had an array of musical delights on offer, starting with Jersey's own Premiere Band taking a break from their usual repetoire to perform some mind-blowing Acid Jazz, followed by gorgeous and super talented sibling multi-instrumentalists Kitty Daisy & Lewis (featured in the video) who set the energetic pace for the evening.

The final act was brilliantly entertaining The Correspondents, fronted by an impressively limber front man who took us from a remix of The Jungle Book's "King of the Swingers" to some very dirty, danceable drum n' bass as a grand finale to the night.

Photos: Sebastian Meyer www.sebmeyer.com

Grand Jersey Hotel saves the Wizard of Oz Drive-in!!

2009-10-04T20:50:00.002+01:00

It was strangely appropriate, but very very inconvenient. Yesterday's high winds were proving too dangerous for the blow-up screen at people's park to show classic film WIZARD OF OZ outdoors - it was so blustery that we had scary visions of our film fans young and old being whisked of to Oz in a magical tornado...

Of course, we couldn't allow that, and so were completely devastated thinking we were going to have to cancel (especially after the success of the Some Like It Hot drive-in the night before). But luckily with only 20 minutes notice, the Grand Jersey Hotel came to the rescue and let us use their plush rooms as an alternative!

The venue proved a hit, and it wasn't long before the audience was settled in their seats and Dorothy was dancing her red sparkly shoes along the yellow brick road with her lovable gang.

And lets not forget the 48 Hour Film Challenge filmmakers, who were hoping to screen their films that night. They were given the luxury of their own private screening room to share the little gems they had made during the past couple of days. More on them later. Sebastien Meyer, one of our festival photographers, managed to papp them all together in their directors chairs... what a gorgeous lot, eh?

The evening was well and truly saved - thank you Grand Jersey Hotel!

Photos: Danny Evans

Borut Strel - son of BIG RIVER MAN - at Branchage Festival

2009-10-04T19:45:00.001+01:00

Yesterday saw Borut Strel, join the Jersey Polar Bears for a quick swim in the channel before the screening of the film he produced, which features the mad and admirable antics of his water-keen father Martin Strel as he swims the entire length of the Amazon river in documentary BIG RIVER MAN

The Jersey Polar Bears kindly sponsored the event, which allowed us to invite Borut over from Slovenia to Jersey for a Q&A after the screening, before they both fly out to the US to promote the film there.

The event sold out in no time at all, and for those of you who didn't get a chance to see the lovely Borut talk, here he is a few minutes with him, interviewed by Catriona Wright - one of our Branchage Team:

Branchage meets David Wood from Lindsay Anderson's IF....

2009-10-03T22:42:00.003+01:00

Friday was a hive of activity, and one of the many festival events happening that night was a screening of Lindsay Anderson's If.... at Victoria College. In attendance was actor David Wood, who starred alongside Malcolm McDowell in the film, as well as Paul Cotgrove from the Lindsay Anderson Memorial Foundation.

We also asked ex-teacher Fraser Martin to get back into teacher mode and prowl along the corridors barking at the "boys" in true If.... style, whilst the audience was on their way into the great hall where Callum Grey was performing beautiful piano music.

Watch the video to see Fraser Martin in role, and David Wood talking about the school tie and "dummy" script that he brought with him.

Friday's 100% Dynamite Reggae Party (does exactly what it says on the tin)

2009-10-03T14:40:00.002+01:00

The Barclays Wealth Spiegeltent was posivitely full of explosive energy and excitement last night as the first Branchage Party went underway.

The Top Cats provided the irresistible tunes with their 10 piece reggae orchestra band to get the whole tent was dancing, including Winstan Whitter, director of doc LEGACY IN THE DUST: THE FOUR ACES STORY, who was spotted up on stage, busting some moves with old friend and front man Natty Bo.

We nipped in for a sec and caught some video footage as they finished one of their songs (camera is rather wobbly we're afraid, but you try walking through a crowd of merry party-goers when the good music's busting out...). Its a little dark to see, but the place was packed, and you could hear the audience cheers from the back of the Branchage Box Office!

More parties to come tonight - LA BORDEE D'BRANCHAGE at the Spiegeltent, with the awesome Kitty, Daisy and Lewis and The Correspondants, and also BRANCHAGE IN THE ASYLUM which sees the cream of Jersey's musicians playing alongside screenings of two of Warp's latest films ALL TOMORROW'S PARTIES and SOULWAX: PART OF THE WEEKEND NEVER DIES. Tickets can be bought on the door, but get there early!!

Friday Night at Gorey Castle - The Battle of Branchage

2009-10-03T10:47:00.008+01:00

Whilst lucky ticketholders for the sold-out SECRET OF KELLS were settled inside the stoney depths of Gorey Castle, the epic exterior of Mont Orgueil was brought to life last night through digital video wizardry. Awe-inspired audiences gathered outside the castle to watch THE BATTLE OF BRANCHAGE, by a new collaboration between two ground breaking collectives Flat-e and Seeper.

We'd try to describe how gorgeous and spectacular this was, but I don't think we could. So here is a video from one of our festival-goers Brobot II (from Brobots, who will be playing at BRANCHAGE IN THE ASYLUM tonight!):

As we wave a little sad goodbye to our 2nd day, Branchage looks back at our super Opening Night!

2009-10-03T00:00:00.012+01:00

Well its actually the second day now (ahem, third day strictly speaking as we look at the clock go past midnight, where does the festival go so quickly?...). As we write this, we can hear the irresistible beats of The Top Cats wafting over the Weighbridge. The 100% Dynamite party is on fire!

So, catching up on last nights antics - The Opening Night Gala of ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD at the Jersey Opera House - what can we say? It was an absolutely stunning evening, the beautiful venue was packed out, editor JOE BINI was totally compelling, Georgina Sawyer's stories of volcanic ice saunas were highly entertaining, the Jersey Dairy ice-cream was delicious and the Spiegeltent was shimmering with special guests and Hierbas cocktails! Here are the photos as proof!

Xanthe introduces the Opening Night.

A Jersey Dairy ice-cream girl poses for the cameras.
Joe Bini talks about working with Werner Herzog on ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD
Branchage patron and producer of last year's Opening Night Gala MAN ON WIRE Simon Chinn talks with Opening Night guests including James Mullighan, Creative Director of one of our festival partners - Shooting People.

To read a more in depth review of the Opening Night on The Quietus blog.

Missed out on tickets for tonight's Opening Night Gala? Come see the 3-D films premiere!

2009-10-01T18:32:00.004+01:00

Jersey Opera House opens its doors tonight to host the festival's Opening Night Gala: ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD. It's going to be a stunning event, and we are welcoming special guest Joe Bini all the way from LA for a Q&A after the screening. This event has sold out, and we know that many of you were keen to come and missed out on tickets.

However, there is a highly unique event happening tonight that doesn't require a ticket, just an a enthusiasm for intrigue and creativity...

Tonight is the world premiere of the specially commissioned 3-D film project: DIMENSIONS OF JERSEY, PRESENTED IN ASSOCIATION WITH SITE-EYE TIME-LAPSE FILMS.

In the first of our Branchage Video-Blogagery from Harriet Fleuriot, here is one of the artists involved - Darren Umney - to tell you a little more about why you should come down tonight to don some stylish 3-D specs and watch Jersey bounce beautifully out from the screen...

DIMENSIONS OF JERSEY will be screening at 15 The Weighbridge every evening of the festival from 7 - 9pm.

We'll be back on the blog later with news on the Opening Night Gala!

Branchage Festival Feedback Forms!

2009-10-01T14:46:00.004+01:00

Branchage Festival is literally hotting up today, with our box office bustling with ticketbuyers, wonderful Branchage volunteers, and guests picking up their passes.

Lamination of various Branchage print items is also helping temperatures sizzle, as well as our freshly printed FEEDBACK FORMS! You will be seeing these beauties at almost every festival event and we're asking you all to fill them in before you leave the venue then hand back them back to a Branchage person (look out for smiley people in Branchage staff t-shirts, wearing staff lanyards).

These feedback forms help us figure out what you love the best, so that we can make sure that next year's festival is full of more fantastic events to suit your fancy!

So please please fill out the forms and also don't forgot to give back the pen you are provided with (which have been kindly donated by Sigma Group) for the people at the next event to use...

Bag yourself a souvenir!

2009-10-01T10:15:00.002+01:00

Beautiful Branchage T-Shirts are now on sale in the Branchage Box Office at 15 Weighbridge Square.

Stop by to purchase a limited Branchage souvenir… and they’re made by American Apparel, so they’re rather trendy too! If you want to see how potentially gorgeous you could be in a Branchage T-Shirt then check out the photos below to see our wonderful Branchage models demonstrating in the selection of lovely colours available - white, pink, blue and grey!

Duncan Jones joins a brilliant line-up of talent at Branchage Festival!

2009-09-30T21:50:00.009+01:00

Branchage is thrilled to announce that Duncan Jones will be joining us in Jersey to present his feature debut, the much-lauded lunar odyssey MOON - our Closing Night Gala Screening at Jersey Opera House on Sunday 4th October. Read about Duncan Jones in this Independent article.

Duncan Jones will round off a rich and varied array of Special Guests coming into Jersey over the next 5 days from around the world.

We are delighted to welcome Emmy Award-Winning director Joe Bini to Branchage 2009. Bini has worked alongside director Werner Herzog for well over a decade, and will be flying in from LA especially to join us for our Opening Night Gala screening of ENCOUNTERS AT THE END OF THE WORLD.

Australian director Andrew Lancaster will spend a few days in Jersey to accompany the screening of ACCIDENTS HAPPEN, starring Gina Davis.

We’re also looking forward to welcoming a host of fresh documentary filmmakers including Jamie Jay Johnson (SOUNDS LIKE TEEN SPIRIT), Nick Abrahams (THE POSTERS CAME FROM THE WALLS) and Gideon Koppel (SLEEP FURIOUSLY), as well as Mercedes Stalenhoef who will fly in from Amsterdam for our screening of CARMEN MEETS BORAT on Sunday 4th October. Several of these films are presented in association with the True/False documentary film festival, the boutique festival of choice for documentary filmmakers, and great supporters of Branchage. David Wilson from True/False will be over from his home in Missouri for the duration of Branchage 2009.

We can’t wait to meet son of BIG RIVER MAN (and ever supportive star of the film) Borut Strel who will be donning his togs and jumping into the Channel for a sea swim with the Jersey Long Distance Swimming Club before the screening!

Our centrepiece gala screening of enchanting children’s animation THE SECRET OF KELLS will feature a Q&A with its Dublin-based Art Director Ross Stewart and we are honoured to have both the directors of British documentary ISOLATION – Luke Seomore and Joseph Bull – at its screening in the Jersey War Tunnels. Luke Seomore will perform his original soundtrack to the film along with musicians David Stephens and Michael Garrad.

Other special guests include the understated and perfectly poised star of UNRELATED, Kathryn Worth, actor David Wood who’ll reminisce with us at our screening of the classic schoolboy wish-fulfilment film IF… and all the way from Durban, South Africa, one of Kim Longinotto’s fiercely compassionate ROUGH AUNTIES, Eureka Olivier.

There’s just time to mention a host of UK film industry visitors, including guests from BAFTA, the UK Film Council, Skillset, London Met, Soda Pictures, Dogwoof, Future Shorts, and not forgetting the our valued partners, Shooting People, who will be running the SHOOTING PEOPLE FILMMAKING CAMPUS throughout the festival.

Finally, we’d like to thank our Festival Patrons who will both be joining us in Jersey this year. Simon Chinn, producer of Oscar-winner MAN ON WIRE, which opened Branchage 2008, and Andrew Kötting, who will be with us this year to launch his 2010 project – A JERSEY JAPE.

We're certain that the outstanding and world-class talent attending the festival will inspire and entertain festival-goers, and in return we'll be giving them a very warm, energetic welcome to the island for Branchage Festival 2009!

Branchage Team Recommendations

2009-09-28T11:16:00.006+01:00

With 3 days to go until Branchage Festival bursts into action, some of the team recommend the events that they are looking forward to the most...

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Xanthe Hamilton (the genius behind Branchage and the big boss of the show)

WFMU LIVE RADIO BROADCAST – From New Jersey to ‘old’ Jersey, as WFMU radio station broadcasts live from the Barclay’s Wealth Speigeltent out across New York on a ‘big apple’ Friday morning.

ROUGH AUNTIES – A rollercoaster ride of emotional twists and turns as Eureka and the rough aunties of Bobbi Bear fight against child abusers in South Africa. I’m so excited to meet the mighty Eureka who’ll be attending Branchage as one of our guests of honour.

BRITISH SEA POWER PERFORM LIVE TO MAN OF ARAN – Definitely a Branchage highlight. I’ve heard nothing but good things about this spectacular live music event as British Sea Power perform their own new soundtrack to this classic 1930’s documentary about a remore Scottish island fishing community.

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Philip Ilson (pleased to see the months of watching films, visiting venues and discussing ideas with the team, all come to fruition as the film & events programme is now in place and ready to roll)

SLEEP FURIOUSLY – a Saturday morning at the Classic Herd Barn in rural Jersey; local food produce breakfast barbeque surrounded by moo-ing cows before enjoying one of the documentary experiences of year. Wallow in the changing seasons of Gideon Koppel’s stunning document of a year in the life of a frozen-in-time Welsh village. Gideon joins us for a post screening Q&A.

ISOLATION – an unmissable event in the German War Tunnels, as we present this powerful and moving document of how soldiers cope when returning from war into normal society, accompanied by a live soundtrack by the filmmakers and a specially put-together band of musicians.

BRANCHAGE IN THE ASYLUM – indie rocking sound & vision at Jersey’s premiere indie club headlined by a screening of the Warp Films documentary of the All Tomorrow’s Parties music festival alongside films on Soulwax and Dizzee Rascal + local bands.

A TOWN HALL MEETING WITH ANDREW KOTTING – idiosyncratic and award-winning filmmaker Kotting comes to Jersey to launch his Jersey Jape 2010, a Branchage commission following on from his Gallivant around the coast of Britain, where he’ll be doing the same in Jersey, meeting and engaging with the locals and collecting stories and archive for this unique project for Jersey.

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Carla MacKinnon (kicking serious *ss and whipping us all into shape as Branchage Festival Producer extraordinaire)

THE VAUXHALL 48 HOUR FILM CHALLENGE - Looking forward to seeing five films screened in full technicolour glory on a 50ft blow-up drive-in cinema, while knowing that 48-hours before they were barely a twinkle in the screenwriter's eye. Anticipating some proper raw, down-and-dirty filmmaking here.

THE BATTLE OF BRANCHAGE - Creative and technology collectives seeper and Flat-e come together to tamper with time and space in this large-scale projection onto a castle hailing from the High Middle Ages. It's worth the trip to Jersey just to hang out on this site - a gorgeous, crumbling fortress saturated with history from the 13th century through to the Second World War. We're even roasting a hog for the occasion.

FREE EDUCATION FOR ALL! - Learn everything in the world at the Shooting People Filmmaking Campus in the very grand Barclays Wealth Spiegeltent and schmooze until your mouth falls off at our daily Happy Hour Networking sessions, while sipping a mix with a kick courtesy of the Branchage bar and Hierbas. Good times.

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Chris Bell (our pr man-on-the-ground out here in Jersey, AKA The Midnight Expresso)

BIG RIVER MAN - Anyone who drinks two bottles of wine a day, eats horseburgers and can still swim down the Amazon River has to be seen. (+ we welcome the Big River Man’s son, Borut Strel, to Jersey to take a swim with the Jersey Long-Distance Swimming Club)

LE DONK - great to see the Shane Meadows / Paddy Considine partnership reunited and looking forward to seeing them making another foray into comedy. A modern day Spinal Tap!

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Harriet Fleuriot (our London based queen of social networking)

BORDEE D'BRANCHAGE - I saw Kitty Daisy & Lewis at Primavera Festival a few months ago and the multi-talented energy they were letting loose was very impressive, the crowd was really going for it. I can't wait to see them and The Correspondents in the Barclays Wealth Spiegeltent - its such a perfect venue. I recommend a slick hair-do and some strong dancing shoes. And don’t forget Jersey’s own Premiere Brass play acid house hits from the 80’s courtesy of Turner-prize winning artist Jeremy Dellar and his Acid Brass project.

AMIMAGICA - Lotte Reiniger's work and life is completely intriguing and inspirational. This is such a unique event and Amiina, all the way from Iceland where they work closely with Sigur Ros, will definitely do Reiniger's work justice with their incredible, beautiful music. The Paper Cinema and Kieron Maguire are a magical compliment.

SHORT FILMS AT THE MAGISTRATE’S COURT - These screenings are FREE and contain some of the best UK shorts this year. You would be crazy not to attend at least one of these events.

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Matt Fiott (our resident Jersey liaison keeping the sponsors happy & wined & dined)

I KNOW WHERE I’M GOING - Powell & Pressburger's delightfully English love story.

SOME LIKE IT HOT at the CLASSIC CAR DRIVE-IN - When will I get the chance to go to a drive-in again?

2009-09-26T14:13:00.007+01:00

Branchage has taken up residence at our super new Box Office in the Weighbridge. It’s a foliage-filled forest of loveliness in here and definitely worth a peek.

From where the Branchage Team are currently perched, we can see some serious greenery cascading across the centre of the shop, as well as a small but perfectly formed drawing room cum library area complete with armchair, decanter and musty books.

Décor aside, pop in to see us at 15 Weighbridge (opposite the Royal Yacht) where we’re itching to chat about what’s on, recommend some programme highlights and sell tickets for all the brilliant films and events on at Branchage 2009.

See you down here!

Branchage at 4docs Launch Party

2009-09-23T11:14:00.008+01:00

Last Wednesday saw the launch party of the much-anticipated 4Docs site (4docs.org.uk), which is the new home of all things pertaining to British short documentary.

With this in mind, the 4Docs team went about re-creating a British seaside themed knees-up for all the Londoners who were craving fish and chips and low-flying seagulls. There were tables full of rock, an abundance of beach balls (complete with a hula-hoop contest) and most importantly, a well-stocked parlour of Jersey Dairy Ice Cream courtesy of Branchage. Of all the complimentary sweets, it was the ice-cream that really sealed the deal. In fact, we don't think we've seen so many ice cream moustaches since our trip to Skegness in 1998. It was exactly what people wanted after a hard day in the office.

Helen Jack, 4Docs blog editor and party producer said, "The ice cream was utterly delicious. We were eating the apple cinnamon ice cream out of the pot with wooden BBQ skewers when we lost the spoons. It really completed our party and we were totally grateful for Branchage's donation and sponsorship of the parlour. I look forward to more ice-cream licking at the festival in October!"

So, for all those who missed out on the London launch, you'll be please to hear that there will be a 4docs Happy Hour at Branchage Festival on Saturday October 3 at 16.00 in the Barclays Wealth Spiegeltent. The 4Docs team look forward to meeting you there for a cocktail (mixed with Hierbas by our friends at Taste of Ibiza).

Call for entry: Journalist mentoring opportunity with The Quietus

2009-09-14T15:24:00.003+01:00

Branchage has teamed up with online film and music journal The Quietus to offer aspiring young critics the opportunity to experience the festival as a member of the press, reviewing events and interviewing guests.

This scheme is open to all school and college students on the island. Entrants need to send in their reviews and two mentees will be selected. They will be mentored daily by Luke Turner, Associate Editor of The Quietus, throughout the festival and their work will be published on the Branchage Festival blog and possibly elsewhere...

To apply send a 100 word review of the last film you saw – whether you loved or hated it! – email to Branchage@thequietus.com by the 25th September 2009.

www.thequietus.com

Last to chance to see Woodstock Experience Exhibition at Idea Generation Gallery

2009-08-28T18:13:00.014+01:00

We were very pleased with indeed with the wonderful venue for our Press & Industry launch last week at the Idea Generation Gallery.

We think its worth a mention (if you haven't worked it out already...) that the space is also a brilliant gallery when not hosting ice-cream fuelled events, and we'd like to recommend its current exhibition - Woodstock Experience.

Produced by Genesis Publication, Woodstock Experience comprises a selection of photographs from the monumental event that was the Woodstock Music & Art Fair aka Woodstock.

Featuring a great combo of monochrome and colour pictures, the collection captures the essence of this 3-day peace and music festival.

The main body of the exhibition is composed of amazing photographs by Henry Diltz (see photo, below), the official Woodstock photographer. These depict the people who put together the festival, the crowd and of course the performers from the mighty Jimi Hendrix to the lesser known but brilliantly talented Canned Heat.

Another special treat are the never before exhibited photographs of the then 17 year old Dan Garson, whose originals and negatives of over 300 pictures sat in a basement for nearly 40 years. Look out for the visual geometrics in the snap named High Time.

Each photograph is appropriately accompanied by a caption. Our personal favourite is the quote by British musician Keef Hartley next to the Henry Diltz’ overwhelming Crowd Shot picture. From his helicopter ride Hartley describes “a bizarre multicoloured vegetation” below, only to discover as they descended further “that this was the festival”.

But hurry, the exhibition is only on until Sunday 30th August! So if you don’t miss your chance to view these never-seen-before photographs from the event that Rolling Stone Magazine once cited as “one of the 50 moments that changed the history of Rock n roll”, head on down to Ideas Generation Gallery Space and lose yourself in the nostalgia...

Idea Generation Gallery: 11 CHANCE STREET, E2 7JB (Just off Redchurch Street,off Shoreditch High St.) www.ideageneration.co.uk/generationgallery

Lush Launch

2009-08-23T20:12:00.026+01:00

The good ship Branchage 2009 was officially launched on Wednesday evening with a heady cocktail of music, confectionary, drinks, 3D film and, most importantly of all, the announcement of this year’s festival programme!

We took over the Idea Generation gallery space for an evening of all things Branchagey, with foliage in abundance, and managed to create a mini-Jersey in East London for press and industry types to get a feel for the festival. Call us crazy, but we just can’t get enough of greenery.

Being ever-generous hosts, Branchage rustled up some super treats for our guests. We’re talking Hierbas Mojitos (the special Branchage Cocktail designed for us by our friends at Taste of Ibiza), and new-addiction-of-all-Branchagers Jersey Dairy ice cream doled out by the cone-load. Moving away from the consumables, we also had food-for-the-ears Plaster of Paris performing (we.love.her.) and an amazing preview of the 3D films of Jersey that are currently in production by artists Gavin Peacock, Brian McClave and Darren Umney (this of course being food-for-the-eyes).

There was also the little matter of announcing some of the Branchage 2009 programme, but don’t fear, if you weren’t there then you will still get to find out all of the treats in store for this year’s festival through the high-tech wizardry of the internet, as our new website goes live next week sporting all of our programme info.

We’ll blog some links and stuff about this next week… the excitement is just a little too much at the moment and Branchage needs to go and have a lie down.

Happy launch-week to one and all x

A Good Healthy Latitude

2009-07-28T21:25:00.008+01:00

Last weekend Team Branchage donned their wellies, packed up their baby wipes and hand sanitizer and headed off to Suffolk to spend a blissful weekend sampling the joys of Latitude Festival.

And which was their Latitude tent of choice? Why, the quite excellent Film & Music Arena of course. 3 days of shorts and features, live music, performance and talks – mmmm, Branchagey bliss.

Branchage’s Head Programmer Philip Ilson was responsible for scheduling some of the Film & Music Arena’s programme (while wearing his London Short Film Festival hat). He lined up some excellent shorts, like Esther May Campbell’s award-winning September, and A Short Film About Freedom by Guy King and Carla Mackinnon – a big Branchage favourite. Also gracing the stage was the ineffable Midnight Expresso, star of Fred Grace’s Tornado of Fame; a spandex-suited tour de force of cabaret rap. There are no words…

Outside the Film & Music Arena, other weekend highlights for the team included Simon Armitage in the poetry tent, Jeffrey Lewis’s late night solo set, the Grace Jones spectacular, French fun with Phoenix and all the general mischief a bright young thing can get up to roaming around the woods for a weekend.

Branchage hearts festivals. Thanks Latitude. x

Branchage 2009 Festival Trailer

2009-07-20T11:34:00.004+01:00

What is to follow needs very little introduction… it speaks for itself.

Please put your hands together for the Branchage 2009 Festival Trailer [cheers and woops]…

Branchage Jersey International Film Festival 2009 from Branchage Film Festival on Vimeo.

A cutting hedge trailer for a cutting hedge festival.

Brought to you with love by the Branchage Team x

Trailer Time (already!)

2009-06-18T14:01:00.003+01:00

One year ago, a very special lady came into our lives, bringing joy and laughter to Branchagers far and wide. Last weekend, that lady was back on the scene, to star once again in a Branchage Festival Trailer. And boy did she star!

Mrs De La Haye joined a cast of Jersey locals for the filming for the 2009 trailer, and we can now state with absolute certainty that this year’s trailer is going to be an absolute corker.

The director’s keeping the plot very close to his chest, but suffice to say, it stars some familiar Jersey faces, some Branchage hedge-cutting in action, and a yellow, plastic workman’s helmet with ear-protectors attached.

All will be revealed in due course…. The trailer’s Coming Soon to a (computer) screen near you!

Locations, Locations, Locations

2009-06-16T12:02:00.022+01:00

Did you feel a heightened sense of excitement and anticipation last week? Want to know why? Team Branchage was in town!

The London Branchage crew hopped over to Jersey last week en masse, and venues were on their mind. The Festival is all about turning Jersey’s most weird and wonderful locations into amazing, atmospheric screening venues, so the Team thought they’d better see every venue on the island in one almighty recce.

We checked out castles, bunkers, indoor pools and outdoor harbours, gardens and farms, a zoo and a racetrack, leisure centres, churches and barns. Oh so many barns.

Now all we have to do is match up the perfect events with the perfect venues and we’ll have an unbelievably cracking festival on our hands. We're so excited it's hard to sleep.

Roll on October 2009!

Branchage love to all x

SUBMISSION IS OPEN - send us your shorts, you may win money, you may see your name in lights (if you spend your winnings on getting this made).

2009-05-25T15:00:00.006+01:00

Much like St Valentine’s day, when the Branchage office front door is wedged shut behind a mountain of cards from Branchage-lovers, getting into Branchage HQ this morning was hard work (phew). Over the long weekend festival submissions have been piling up, waiting patiently to be lovingly unwrapped and delicately placed in Branchage DVD players, ready to amaze and astound.

Okay, so we’re quite a long way off the final judging still, but submission to this year’s Branchage Jersey International Film Festival has officially opened. It has only been a week or so and already the entries are arriving, to the heady excitement of the Branchage Programming Team and all concerned.

This year the festival is looking for your short films – any subject, any genre, any style – and it’s well worth the entry as we’re cooking up a great set of awards and prizes. There’s a £10,000 cash pot all in all, but the finer details of categories and the divvying up of that cash is yet to be announced. Keep your ears to ground, all will be revealed soon.

If you have a short film to enter, wherever you’re from in the world, entry is hassle-free via Withoutabox.com, so just head to the Branchage website for all the details, and who knows, you could end up seeing your name in lights.

Here are some dates you need to know:
Early Bird Deadline – 4th June
Regular Deadline – 9th July
Late Deadline – 16th July

Here is a picture of your name in lights (off the internet). x