Hello – I’m just back from a holiday, that should have started with an Excel flight, except they went bust the day before I left. Cue 28 hours of delays and long airport bar bills, until a substitute flight actually took off. Most annoyingly they kept delaying the fight without revealing reasons – first 7 hours, then 5 more, then the next day etc. I understand it was a logistical nightmare on a grand scale, but it’s so much better when people are straight with you about the state of play, instead of fobbing you off.

So, I would like to personally say sorry sorry sorry for the fact that FourDocs has not been reviewing and posting your films for a quite a long while, and the fact that links from the old site are not working at the moment. There are some technical complications with channel4.com, which is why you can’t watch films on the old site, and this message appears:

The good news is that we will be pulling more of the old FourDocs films on to the new site, in the watch films sections.  Also we’ll be adding them into our new YouTube channel (following a massive deal Channel 4 has done with YouTube). And, we’ll be posting the best of the new submissions here in the blog for you to enjoy.

The My Home Town competition has closed now. Everybody responded really well and closely to the brief, offering up experimental, personal films, of a very high standard. I’m going to post a dozen of the most original and exciting films here for you to watch and comment on over the next few weeks. Thanks everybody who entered – we’ll be announcing who’s been selected for the 3 Minute Wonder slot next month, and the new theme.

At first glance it’s a generalisation of human behaviour that isn’t factual. It’s a particularly funny fictional account of mister average, so it strikes a cord at points in its circular story with most of us. However, you know where this stuff comes from – the painful personal experiences of the scribe. I’m going to suggest that How To Break Up therefore inverses a major rule of documentary – you know the one about how you’re meant to take the particular experience you’re filming and imply its universal ramifications. What do you think – could this lo-fi cartoon be considered a type of personal documentary, or possibly as lying within the fast sinking sand between fact and fiction?

It’s made by Common Craft, an awesome company who explain technological terms clearly and completely, by making short factual films. So, it seems entirely fitting to show some of their work here. Who else do you think is making really great factual how to guides?