Eventful times ahead

Some stuff's a-happenin' in the near (and nearer) future you might want to check out if you happen to be nearby. First off a late (last?) hurrah for my short film Speed as it joins the wonderful German touring programme Shorts Attack following its inclusion in the Interfilm Berlin festival back in 2020. Starting today it'll be amongst the lineup of the October selection Wo die Liebe hinfällt (Where Love Falls) alongside some of my favourite recent animations Just A Guy (Shoko Hara), Cipka (Renata Gasiorowska), Dans La Nature (Marcel Barelli) and Mmm...Cat (Yongxin Wang) as well as some live action shorts that look like fun. Check out the full list of dates and venues over on their website if it sounds like your cup of Schwarztee.

In a few weeks the Fredrikstad Animation Festival will kick off in Norway. Having weighed in on the preselection for their national competition programme back in July I'll be back over there to host their Meet The Filmmakers: Short Film Competition Q&A session on Friday October 21st at 8:30pm. As well as the various shorts programmes some event highlights to look out for include masterclasses with Mark Burton, Marie-Laure Guisset and Peter de Sève plus a screening of the wonderful Signe Baumane's My Love Affair With Marriage. You can check out the full schedule here.

Next month the Manchester Animation Festival will be back at HOME for a full physical edition after being mainly online for the last couple years. I'll be there for a nice chunk of it to muck in with several of the events - the Skwigly Screening will return for the first time since COVID on November 14th at 2pm and there'll be a special live edition of mine and Laura-Beth's podcast Intimate Animation on the 16th at 3:45pm. Later that day at 8pm our traditionally infuriating Skwigly Quiz will give festivalgoers a chance to viciously compete with one another before scratching and clawing their way to the prize table. There'll also be a screening of the Linoleum programme Sensitive Content followed by my recorded Q&A with the participants at 6pm on the 14th and Laura-Beth will be part of the panel Animated Answers: 3D Printing at 4pm on the 15th. As always there's a ton of other great stuff that'd be too long to list here so go ahead and check out the programme and grab yourself a pass.

Old friends

A couple of familiar festivals on the horizon for Speed. From November 11th through to December 13th the digital edition of the magnificent Interfilm Berlin will be taking place and I'm grateful to be among the line-up of their special programme Eject _XXIII - The Long Night of Weird Shorts. I guess I'm nothing if not consistent as Klementhro screened as part of Eject XVIII five years ago - always nice to be back amongst my fellow weirdos. The programme will be available to stream from November 23rd-29th via the Sooner platform - from the 11th you can grab your tickets here! 

Another event I'm pretty stoked about is Estonia's PÖFF Shorts, the sub-festival of the prestigious Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival. Way back in 2009 PÖFF was one of the first events to give my student film House Guest some indecent exposure and I've not managed to weasel my way back into any of their line-ups since, so this is a li'l nugget o' gratification. This one runs from November 17th through to the 25th and will be an online/physical hybrid event. Speed is part of the shorts programme Late Night Love that has two near-simultaneous screenings on November 25th - 7:45pm (in Hall 7 of Tallinn's Coca-Cola Plaza) and 8pm at Tartu's Athena Center. If you're not feeling it yet when it comes to physical screenings you can find info on how the online viewing works here.

Decluttering

Here's the last batch of dates for Interfilm's Shorts Attack Travel Stories programme (featuring Klementhro) that has been touring Germany throughout July. You can catch the film and its similarly nomadic companions at the following cities/venues:

• July 25th, 9pm - Kinobar Prager Frühling, Leipzig
• July 26th, 8:30pm - Cinema & Kurbelkiste, Münster
• July 27th, 6pm/8pm - Zoom Kino, Brühl
• July 27th, 8pm - Programmkino Ost, Dresden
• July 28th, 8pm - Filmraum, Hamburg

Thanks so much again to the Shorts Attack team for including the film and to everyone who got in touch with nice things to say about it. Klementhro's journey is far from over, however, so keep checking back for more updates as to just where he'll wind up next.

Last week I put up a video on my Facebook page offering up some free and cheap paraphernalia leftover from the days of promoting House Guest, namely the Official Pirate Version and the convention-exclusive graphic novel/DVD bundle. While the free DVDs went fairly quickly there are still a few book/DVDs available for a measly £5 that I'm happy to send over. It's a nice li'l book that I'm still quite proud of, and while these copies have been a little 'handled' by conventioneers it's a lot cheaper than you'd get them for new. If it's not of interest then at the very least you can enjoy the pretty horsies:

Summer Break

It's been a long journey for our simple lad Klementhro, but the last stops of Kurzfilmnacht Schweiz, the first leg of the Short Film Nights tour focusing on Swiss-German speaking cities, will be this Friday (27th) and Saturday (28th) in both Uster and St. Gallen. For both nights the Uster programme will start at 8:30 at the Kino Qtopia while things kick off a little earlier (8pm) in St. Gallen at the Kinok Lokremise. Many thanks to the folks at Short Film Nights and I'm looking forward to the second leg of the tour later on in the year!

In the meantime Klementhro will be laying down his paddle for June (I'd had my fingers crossed the film would be picked to screen at Bill Plympton and Nancy Phelps's wonderful Annecy + party - which included The Naughty List a few years back - but alas it looks like the event is taking a hiatus this year) though it will be back in Germany for Shorts Attack, a series of themed screenings from Interfilm Berlin, in July! Exact time(s)/date(s) to follow.
I'm also happy to report that the recent burst of activity and wonderful response the film received has broken a dam, so to speak, and I've been filled with a renewed energy to make more films. While I'm not quite ready to start uttering the B-word again, I have scripts for several short'n'bizarre - as well as one not-so-short-but-especially-bizarre - film ideas that I'm itching to get started on, the first of which (working title: Sunscapades) I've already put a rough animatic together for and even done some early assets/animation tests. I'll leave you with one of the latter to chew on:

November Reign

I'm in the last month of the oft-cryptically-alluded-to Project Group-Hug, something that has turned out to be a mammoth endeavour that I'm looking forward to revealing properly soon. Needless to say it's taking up more or less every waking hour of my life in this final stretch, so expect blog posts to be few and short for the next little while.

However I do have some updated screening news for my new film, with some time and date specifics. At Portugal's Área de Contenção it will be screened on November 7th at 11am as part of the festival's Monstro Debaixo da Cama program.

As previously mentioned it will screen at Interfilm Berlin's 31st International Short Film Festival at 11pm November 13th in the section Eject XVIII: The Long Night of Weird Shorts alongside some other great films such as Steve Kirby's If the Cuckoo Don't Crow, Rory Waudby-Tolley's Tusk, Andreas Hykade's Myself Universe and Two Films About Loneliness by William Bishop-Stephens. Ich bin ein Berlin-type-guy!

Also in Germany it will be shown as part of the Flensburg Short Film Festival's International Animation screening at 7:45pm on November 21st, again amongst some fine work such as Leonid Shmelkov's Very Lonely Cock.

Those who may find themselves at the Manchester Animation Festival later this month may wish to swing by our Skwigly Showcase screenings myself and Laura-Beth have curated that will take place on Tuesday 17th at 4pm and Wednesday 18th at 3:30pm. There's a good chance that said new film will have been sneakily snuck in to the Tuesday screening. I should have more info and specifics on these shortly, so check back!
Righto, back to group-huggin'...

I got me some of that Oktoberfest spirit

More upcoming festival news for those of you might be feeling a little without a paddle on this fine Friday. I'm very happy to say my adorably shy new film will be getting two German outings this coming November, firstly at Interfilm Berlin's 31st International Short Film Festival which runs from November 10th-15th.

Shortly thereafter it will play at the Flensburger Kurtzfilmtage (or the Flensburg Short Film Festival, but frankly I prefer the German name) which runs from November 18th-22nd. I'll fill you all in with the exact dates/times/venue info when I know. Needless to say I'm very happy that it's finally reached German shores as that country was where my third film The Naughty List got probably the most consistent and positive responses. Danke schön!