Michael Whyte’s documentation NO GREATER LOVE about about the Carmelite nuns in the monastery of the Most Holy Trinity in Notting Hill won the Feature Film Competition!
NO GREATER LOVE
It was only after ten years of correspondence with the Monastery that award-winning film and television director Michael Whyte was allowed to enter the premises of what is perhaps one of the most stringent cloisters left in the West. Here, nuns uphold silence for as long as twenty-two hours a day and have but two hours of recreation, rarely leave the premises except to visit a doctor or dentist, and are entirely devoted to prayer and meditation. Michael Whyte does not use a narrator but quietly and observantly follows the nuns as they pray, sing hymns, cook, tend the garden and make their own clothes. A few nuns are interviewed and their charm and wit confound general perception and show that nuns are not only serious all the time but can be humorous too.
NO GREATER LOVE offers an inspiring and absorbing insight into religion at the same time that it presents an alternative way of living so removed in its tranquility from our frantic and materialistic lifestyle.
Our prize for Best Feature Film is sponsored by the production company Pictorion | Das Werk. The winner gets 16 hours of post production at Pictorion | Das Werk (worth 12.000 Euro). Furthermore, Pictorion - Das Werk sponsored a special statuette which will be awarded to the winning film: This sculpture was developed and produced by the Berlin-based artist Holger Beisitzer.
Simon Tofield’s SIMON’S CAT: TV DINNER won the short film competition.
Inspired by his own cats Hugh, Maisie, Jess and Teddy, he triggered a proper fan boom on the world wide web with SIMON’S CAT: His four films reached over 29 million hits on youtube which got him the Blockbuster Award. Meanwhile, the correspondent comic book has been released. Three of the cat comics will be shown at britspotting: LET ME IN, TV DINNER and FLY GUY.
The winner of the britspotting short film competition gets a free membership and a Two Day Screenwriting course at The Script Factory, Great Britain’s renowned scriptwriting school.
Our short film spotlight beams towards a special kind of goat: the London based production company Lonely Goat did not only make this year’s trailer but also presented their latest short film THE END at britspotting.
Behind Lonely Goat there is the filmmaking duo Andy Cronk and Deborah Hogan. THE END tells in a very funny way how hard it is to end a relationship. Gary Paterson tries several times but fate plays with Gary’s plans and things don’t quite run as smoothly as he’d hoped…THE END celebrated its world premiere at britspotting!
Lonely Goat, however, is not unknown to britspotting: in 2006 Andy Cronk and Deborah Hogan delighted the audience with their short film NO STRINGS ATTACHED that accompany one man’s preparation for an air guitar contest.
This year’s festival trailer which is also made by Lonely Goat has the motto: Celebrating 10 years of British & Irish characters. In the sense of the cinematic variety of britspotting it shows some characters from the islands who are commenting in their particular dialects.
For those looking for a tantalising midnight movie, forget the standard Rocky Horror attraction: come to our midnight special screening and German premiere of COLIN instead, a zombie movie produced on an astonishing shoestring budget of 45£ but so brilliantly shot that it will prove to be just as much fun, if not more. Furthermore, we will have the pleasure to welcome lead actor Alastair Kirton at the screening!
Told from the point of view of a zombie, COLIN follows our hero, Colin (Alastair Kirton) as he gets bitten and returns as one of the undead to the suburbs in the midst of an apocalypse. Rather than merely throwing out blood and gore, autodidact first time filmmaker Marc Price from Swansea also engages our emotions and makes Colin a believable character whose experiences gradually win our sympathy. Combined with a “broad daylight zombie versus human street battle” and an “epic housebound siege”, Colin becomes even more irresistable.
Marc Price relied on unpaid acting and make-up contribution from friends and acquaintances and allegedly spent money only on a crowbar and some tapes. So how did this movie of meagre means manage to shine among the many other movies at this year’s Cannes? Come and find out.
We take you to the formidable waters of Ireland with WAVERIDERS, a Joel Conroy documentary that explores surfing’s apparent Irish (not Hawaiian, not Californian!) roots and follows top-notch surfers like Kelly Slater as they bravely take on the menacing waves that almost always fill up the entire height of the movie screen.
The devoted and passionate crew spent five years on this breath-taking project tracing not only the birth of waveriding to George Freeth, son of an Irishman, but capturing also the indefatigable spirit shared by the waveriders and the scintillating beauty of the country now lovingly called the “cold paradise” by enthusiastic surfers from around the world. The movie is so skilfully and sumptuously shot that it overwhelms us with the fascinating nature of the sport and infects us with the surfers’ boundless energy and a lust for life which is very optimistic and certainly seldom seen elsewhere. Given the kind of gloomy weather we have in Berlin this winter, the heart-warming WAVERIDERS will cheer us up like no other movie.
On Saturday (November, 14) we cordially invite you to an exclusice Short Filmmakers Evening in our short film location Das Filmcafé, where all of our short films will be shown. Furthermore, some of the short film filmmakers will be there and are looking forward to chat with you about the films whilst having a Merrydown-Cider (for free!) or Irish Coffee.
After 8 pm, there will be Irish Coffee for 1€ and after the last short film screening of the evening, which will be around midnight, we are going to unwrap the karaoke machine! The karaoke machines will be provided by Blue Media.
Filmmakers, britspotters and you, come together, enjoy the music and have some Irish Coffee - We are looking forward to it!
Das Filmcafé, Schliemannstraße 15, Berlin, U-/S-Bahn: Schönhauser Allee
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