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? Baghdad Express was a perfect example of this. Out of all the films, it was the most confident about what it was, and director Nimer Rashed is the person I would give my money to if I was commissioning television drama. It was a strong story, told and filmed well, with great acting. But is it desirable that the most accomplished films are the ones you can most easily imagine progressing onwards into already established spots in the landscape of production money? What about taking risks and discovering something fresh and exciting that people [distributors] don’t quite know what to do with?

It’s actually a rare occurrence to have a film made by new talent that works filmically and emotionally resonates with the audience. It’s the kind of ‘product’ which is opaque on paper applications because it depends on the magical X-factor that’s hard to predict, and doesn’t come around too often. Certainly not an annual basis in line with funding deadlines. Which is why Love Does Grow on Trees, immediately produced through a local scheme with the borough of Wandsworth, is now being shown off by every funder attached to it – as an example of brave British filmmaking at its best. Even if its screening status isn’t as virginal as promised.

This conversation leads me off in lots of different directions, which I am going to pursue in further blog entries.

1) Taking risks in filmmaking, especially having just seen Terence Davies’ Of Time and The City. I was struck by the frequent comment that it is a crime it’s taken eight years since anyone has funded him – he was considered too ‘high risk’ as his previous film The House of Mirth didn’t do well – yet his new low-fi film has played to critical acclaim at every festival, including Cannes. Risky means high and low returns, not mediocrity… Should certain segments of film funding be cornered off for high risk candidates who may mess up, but who also might shake up our notions of what to hope to expect in a film?

2) The future of film distribution. I went to the very inspiring Power to the Pixel conference last week. Heading up the conference were amazing anarchic filmmakers whose approach is how can I make things work for me [in terms of independent film distribution for the type of film I actually want to make], and be open to individual possibilities instead of being closed and possessive [like old models of distribution and funding are].

It’s about his memories and dreams and experiences growing up in a small boring town. How did where you come from help shape who you are today? You don’t need to physically put yourself in front of the camera, but you must stamp your own personality firmly onto your film. And in homage to Guy’s experimental nature, we want to ask you to really push the boundaries of what documentaries can and should be like.

One way to create something for this is to write commentary to lay down with moving images of your home town, perhaps reflecting on how it’s changed, or why you love/hate/am so totally indifferent to it.

Perhaps you could use archive in an interesting way, or like Guy use your siblings to reenact key moments from your childhood. Is there something strange happening in your hometown that outsiders would never guess goes on? Or an interesting character to investigate, someone who everyone recognise, but few know much about? Perhaps this could be a chance to try out basic animation techniques or a new self interviewing technique. We want to build up a collection of intimate insights into places around the UK, and the people who live there, that visually look completely different.

As well as 4 films being played on Channel 4 (and receiving £1500 each) Guy is going to pick one film to go the DVD of My Winnipeg as an extra feature. And that person will also win a holiday to Canada! The distribution company Soda Pictures have a built a site for you upload your films to directly, and read more about the competition. You need to get films up on-line and send us the link by the end of August, so get thinking and creating now. And feel free to post any questions about style and techniques here, and I’ll do my best to answer them.