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.

THE END

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.

See the trailer in full length hiere:

COLIN

Small money, big scare

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.

COLIN: November, 14 - midnight - Babylon

WAVERIDERS

Long Live Surfing!

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.

WAVERIDERS: November, 14 - 6:00 pm - Babylon

britspotting rewind: November, 16 - 9:30 pm - Babylon

Das Filmcafé

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

britspotting poster

On November, 13, the britspotting film festival will start with the film IN THE LOOP and an exclusive Twinings Tea Party in the cinema Babylon. Furthermore, treats will be provided by celebrity chef  Troy Lopez (from the restaurant Rosa Caleta).

You can buy the tickets directly at the cinema Babylon from now on or you can win 1×2 tickets and your names will be put on the guest list:

Just take a photo of one of our festival posters which can be seen all over Berlin and send it to info@britspotting.de !

The closing date is November, 12.

IN THE LOOP: November, 13 - 7:30 pm - Babylon

Note it down as a facebook event.

TERMINAL COMMUNICATION

Experimental!

With Experiments, once again britspotting will show you an enthralling selection of contemporary experimental films and video art from Great Britain and Ireland this year. Alongside well-established artists and filmmakers, we will present you emerging talents who are to watch in the future.

Ben Rivers is one of the most renowned contemporary English experimental filmmakers. In his exceptional, very subjective documentaries, he often deals with charackters, who backed out of the “ordinary” society and try to live their own utopia. Suitably to the prior Darwin Year, britspotting presents his film ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES about S., a man - far away from any civilisation - who engages in Darwin’s theories over decades in order to understand the world.

MATTER IN MOTION, a film by the British artist duo Semiconductor (Ruth Jarman and Joe Gerhardt) presents Milan in an uncommon way. The two artists put the seemingly fixed material of buildings into motion and show the constant changes the city is exposed to.

BAFTA-rewarded filmmaker Tal Rosner deals with urban space in a very different manner. In WITHOUT YOU, he explores the industrial outskirts of London with the help of surface structures.

Ian W. Gouldstone, whose BAFTA-rewarded animated film GUY 101 will be shown in the britspotting Anniversary Shorts series, ventures a very special experiment with TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: Basically, the film does not have any director, but is a joint project together with animation film students of the Newport University.

The Irish vidoe artist Michael Fortune shows how much exhileration a badly signposted terminal can cause - in the audience at least. TERMINAL COMMUNICATION is the first short film by Michael Fortune to be shown at britspotting.

You can see the full list of shorts in the Experiments series here.

EXPERIMENTS (82 min):
November,13 - 10:30 Uhr - Das Filmcafé
November, 14 - 6:30 Uhr - Das Filmcafé

britspotting rewind:
November, 17 - 10:00 Uhr - Das Filmcafé

Here you can gain an insight of MATTER IN MOTION:

PLEASE SAY SOMETHING

Beastly Good!

Our animation short film series Death and other fun things to do has them all: dogs, cats, mice and even a whole virgin forest - but, of course, even more…

We already reported about the award-winning love life of a cat lady and a mouse in PLEASE SAY SOMETHING by David O’Reilly which was awarded Best Short Film at this year’s Berlin International Film Festival and has just won the German Short Film Prize in Gold in the category animation/experimental film. The reduced and inventitive art work which surprisingly touches the audience was particularly praised by the jury. “This peculiar short pixel-love story between cat and mouse leaves you far more touched than many large-scale production with a  top-class cast” says the jury. And we say: A must-see!

Simon Tofield’s cat comics (Spotlight on: from September, 1) are also touching and inspiring. 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.

Stephen Irwin’s THE BLACK DOG’S PROGRESS tells the story of the sad destiny of a rejected dog which is bounced around. In the style of a flip-book, the disturbing story of the dog is revealed bit by bit. The sophisticated animation is accompanied by vivid music. THE BLACK DOG’S PROGRESS has been shown at numerous festivals and just won the Design Award at the Klik! Amsterdam Animation Festival. The britspotting audience already knows Stephen Irwin from 2005, when his film DIALOG was shown.

ROUND by Kirk Hendry is an animation which is one-of-a-kind. The story about death and birth in the jungle is told exclusively by a shadow play of hands. Therefore, an Argentinian artist will be engaged who strikingly illustrates flora and fauna with his hands. The film also features something for our acoustic senses: the British band XX Teens contributes the Song Round of their album Welcome To Goon Island.

You can see a full list of our short film series Death and other things to do here.

DEATH AND OTHER FUN THINGS TO DO - ANIMATIONS (80 min):
November, 14 - 10:30 pm - Das Filmcafé
November, 15 - 8:30 pm - Das Filmcafé

britspotting rewind:
November, 16 - 10:00 pm - Das Filmcafé

Get a taste of Simon Tofield’s cat films with TV DINNER here:

LITTLE RED HOODIE

Loony and award-winning!

What does a manic Little Red Riding Hood have in common with a photo of Jesus and  wild teenage sex? You can find it out in the short film series Twisted!

The bizarre and disturbing Little Red Riding Hood adaptation LITTLE RED HOODIE by Joern Utkilen just strikes all of a heap: Little Red Riding Hood is represented by a precocious and grumpy girl, the wolf is a pimpled, featherbrained village prat and the basket with wine and cake is made into a wheelbarrow with TV and video tapes. Joern Utkilen, who in 2006 enthused the britspotting audience with SIZE 5, succeeds with a very modern and loony version of the fairy tale classic. LITTLE RED HOODIE was already shown at many festivals (e.g. Edinburgh, Hamburg, BFI London) and is nominated for the BAFTA Scotland.

The inquiries which are received daily by the Hulton Archive of Getty Images are also completey crazy and comical. A photo of Jesus or the Abominable Snowman? These are just two out of many examples from Laurie Hills lovingly animated documentary PHOTOGRAPH OF JESUS which deservedly cleaned up at film festivals: In Edinburgh it won the McLaren Award for New British Animation and it was awarded Best Experimental Short Film at the Chicago International. In 2007, Laurie Hill’s MY LIFE AT 40 was shown at britspotting where he animated his childhood imaginations of his life as a 40-year-old.

The song LOVE YOU MORE by the 70s punk band Buzzcocks was the inspiration for Sam Taylor-Wood’s film of the same title. The two teenagers and Buzzcocks fans Georgia (Andrea Riseborough) and Peter (Harry Treadway) can’t aquit themselves whilst hearing Love You More and are literally all over each other in the bedroom. The award-winning director could win an impressive crew for her film. Both Oscar nominated scriptwriter Patrick Marber (CLOSER, NOTES ON A SCANDAL) and Oscar winner Anthony Minghella (THE ENGLISH PATIENT) worked on LOVE YOU MORE which was highly praised at Sundance.

You can see the full list of shorts in the Twisted series here.

TWISTED (80 min):
November, 13 - 8:30 pm - Das Filmcafé
November, 14 - 10:30 pm - Das Filmcafé

britspotting rewind:
November, 17 - 8:00 pm - Das Filmcafé

Get a taste of LOVE YOU MORE here:

MONSTERS & RABBITS

Of Men and Monsters!

Watch the heroes of our short film series Departures/Outcasts as they try to cope with death, lost friendship, love and sickness.

The documentary IRENE by Lindsay Goodall is staggering and touching. The director portrays her own grandmother Irene who develops Alzheimer’s disease and is being looked after by her daughter Roberta (Lindsay’s mother). The film strikingly shows the consequences of the illness on the relationship between the three generations of women. Not only did the film impress us, but also the Academy, which short-listed IRENE for an Oscar nomination. We keep our fingers crossed. Lindsay and her mother will attend the festival and will gladly answer all of your questions.

What happens to a imaginative friend when you start finding real friends is shown in Nicky Lianos’ film MONSTERS & RABBITS. Michael is a typical misfit kid whose best and only friend is Kenny - a smoking and drinking monster - only exists in his imagination. Together they drift to their astronaut-imaginary world and everything is in best order until one day, Michael makes friends with a “real” girl and Kenny gets jealous… Nicky Lianos’ film addresses many people: everything is represented from children’s film festival to fantasy.

A coming-out film which is one-of-a-kind is JAMES by Connor Clements. Young James makes his first experiences with his homosexuality, but doesn’t know who to confide in. Totally isolated from his classmates and parents he eventually thinks that he found an intimate in his class teacher and hopes for his support. However, his teacher’s reaction turns out differently which leads James to take a radical step. The countless prizes which JAMES already won prove how much the subject of Conner Clement’s debut feature touches hearts.

You can see the full list of shorts in the Departures/Outcasts series here.

DEPARTURES/OUTCASTS (80 minutes):
November, 13 - 6:30 pm - Das Filmcafé
November, 14 - 8:30 pm - Das Filmcafé

britspotting rewing:
November, 18 - 8:00 pm - Das Filmcafé

Get a taste of MONSTERS & RABBITS here: