An apology...Arriving at a boutique film festival with a pc laptop is bad enough, but forgetting your power cable to boot only serves to remind you how un-media friendly you are. Looking out at a sea of illuminated apple signs I realised that I wasn't going to find someone else with a dell computer and so my best laid plans to blog daily from the festival were, well, mislaid almost immediately. Sorry about that.
It seems only fair, seeing as the festival is now over and the winners have been announced, to start with the end and work backwards. So to the winners:
The Audience Award went to DFG Member (
and former guest blogger) Jerry Rothwell for his film
Heavy Load, which he pitched at the inaugural edition of the festival back in 2006. Congrats Jerry! I missed the film in order to attend the feature doc session on behalf of the DFG lot, but those I knew who attended said it was a fantastic film. Can't wait to see it...
The much-lauded
Man on Wire won Best Film and by all accounts was much deserved. Andy Glynne - never one to lavish praise on anything - actually said something about it being one of the best films he'd ever seen. Another one for the list then, as at the time that was screening, I was over in the O'Reilly Theatre watching my personal favourite of the festival - and the deserved winner of the award for
Best Short - The Solitary Life of Cranes. A beautiful, revealing and multi-layered film by Eva "
Intimacy of Strangers" Weber, I think I might even prefer this to her earlier doc. Although it's a tough call. Anyway, if you manage to catch this at another festival, I urge you to do so.
Best pitch went to Julie Moggan's highly entertaining trailer and pitch for
Guilty Pleasures, about the worldwide phenomenon of Mills and Boon, while Hannah Patterson won the Short Pitch award for what is a real passion project,
Shelter in Place. Hannah is the editor of "
Documentaries... And How To Make Them" that we're currently
selling via DFGDocs, so if you love it, then she must share some praise. I also know that she's been working on this project for a good couple of years now, which just goes to show that one of a documentary filmmaker's greatest weapons is tenacity!
Hopefully hearing about the best of the fest will whet your appetite, and I'll return in the coming days to update this little beauty of a blog...