Last night I went to the BFI to watch some shorts funded through various schemes associated with Film London.

My favourite far and away was Bevan Walsh’s nostalgically humorous Love Does Grow on Trees, which I’d actually already seen when it won Best Newcomer Award at Rushes Soho Shorts Festival. (One liner description: a teenage boy’s lust and desire for pornography in a world before the Internet.) This caused a few murmurs in the audience afterwards, because it was emphatically stated that the slate of films were all worldwide premiers.

New talent investment is a funny thing. Organisations give money to people to make films and find their directing voice, and mostly come back with perfectly acceptable safe films that seem professional enough but challenge nothing. This means they can’t be seen as ‘failures’, but is this the same as a success story? read more

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This was an alright little doc. It came together quite neatly at the end.

The friction of a resident’s real experiences contrasted with a corny Tour Tape could have been corny itself – but it kind of held it together. It must be a pain living under the shadow of Shakespeare’s quill.

All in all I’ve enjoyed watching the films in this competition and if I’ve seemed harsh at some points ­ grow a thick skin. This is just one man’s opinion. I’m not arguing THE way. I’m just championing what I like. You should champion your own style and your own voice. If you don’t march to the beat of your own drum your step will be all over the place. read more

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I’m not sure how many times I could watch this. In particular the music became grating after about thirty seconds and then it carried on ad infinitum.

Again it had that feeling of late night filler you used to get on TV ­ where there might be a couple of minutes you need to fill in the schedule at some ungodly hour and so they stick in something that doesn’t really go anywhere or do anything. Who knows? Maybe the feeling I had of wanting to get away completely echoes what it’s like to live in Bargoed, South Wales?

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This film did my head in. I hated the voiceover and couldn’t really understand a lot of what was being said.

My mind wandered a lot ­ not because I’m simple ­ but because the whole rhythm of it felt so nothingy. The only point where I started to get a bit interested was when the form completely changed at the end and we had a bit of an interview with the ventriloquist. read more

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I didn’t like this. It felt like I was on a school trip to a museum and pressed a button on a display in order to listen to a recorded actor tell me what life was like “back then”.

Sorry ­ it just wasn’t for me. It had echoes of those daytime history channel programs where you have pieces of archive footage or re-enacted events which have been made to “look old” in the edit by clicking on the, “make it look old” button you get on all the editing software owned by the history channel. read more

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The editing wasn’t hitting the right notes for me. A lot of the pictures to voiceover were either too literal ­ or incoherent.

There was a lot of the latter. My brain couldn’t always makes sense of the connection between the words and the pictures

Is that because I’m a rubbish viewer? Or is it cos the editor didn’t communicate successfully enough to me as a viewer what was perhaps obvious to them? The result was that as a viewer I began to increasingly lose my grip on the film’s narrative and in turn my interest waned. read more

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There was a really nice tone and feeling to this film.  There was a warmth and likeability to the filmmaker and how they came across.

And that really counts for a lot, ­ especially if telly is the route you want to take. (You’re gonna have more success if you come across as likeable as opposed to coming across like a bastard.) read more

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Very good. It created more of an emotional resonance than a lot of the films here, without the use of voiceover.

Dropped you into a sensory experience to communicate a feeling of unease and agitation. In this respect it placed the viewer firmly within the emotional landscape of what it’s like to live in that town ­ rather than narrating, lecturing and telling you what it’s like. read more

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At first I hated this film. It sort of warmed on me a bit when it came together towards the end. However it just felt too much like “a documentary” for my liking.

The idea was cute enough – but the narrative and the visual rendering of it didn’t transcend anything other than generic TV documentary. There was nothing singular or idiosyncratic in the filmmaking ­ which is what I personally look for when I sit down to watch a film. In an anodyne world of formatted TV and trend-following commissioning, I’m desperate for violent individualism and for filmmaking that is a breath of beautiful idiosyncracy. read more

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