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SWANDOWN selected for 2013 Cannes Film Festival (ACID section)

Andrew Kötting and Iain Sinclair’s “playfully absurd” travelogue documentary, Swandown has been selected to screen in the France’s Association for the Diffusion of Independent Cinema (ACID) section at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival, which celebrates innovation and experimentation in filmmaking and aims to giving greater visibility to new talent. The film, which is backed by the BFI Film Fund, is produced by Lisa Marie Russo and executive produced by Kate Ogborn for Fly Film.

Swandown (94 mins, col) is a travelogue and odyssey of Olympian ambition in which Andrew Kötting (the filmmaker) and Iain Sinclair (the writer) pedal a swan-shaped pedalo from Hastings on the south coast of England via the sea, rivers and canals to London. With modest references to Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo mixed with a little Dadaism, the film documents their epic journey, on which they are joined by invited guests who share in the pedaling. En-route they encounter travellers, river-dwellers, outsiders, refuseniks and ordinary passers-by who’s reactions are a mixure of amusement, puzzlement and ridicule.

Andrew Kötting is one of Britain’s most intriguing artists, and perhaps the only film-maker currently practising who could be said to have taken to heart the spirit of visionary curiosity and hybrid creativity exemplified by the late Derek Jarman. Swandown is a fine example of his oeuvre in which he is joined by writer and cultural explorer Iain Sinclair who’s best known in film circles for his collaborations with Christopher Petit.

Swandown is utterly funny, deeply lyrical, wholly winning, unchallengeably unique. It converts Kötting at a stroke from an acquired taste to a required one. *****
The Financial Times

An engagingly eccentric aquatic odyssey
Screen International

The waterways are beautifully shot, by day and night, and the surreal giant swan turns the dullest of landscapes into a funfair. [...] The film is as fascinating as it is self-indulgent and meandering.
The Times

There’s something enjoyably Herzogian about the pair’s trip: the way Kötting and Sinclair wrestle their craft, nicknamed Edith, over muddy embankments and bicker as they splosh along loamy waterways makes Swandown feel like Fitzcarraldo on a You’ve Been Framed budget. ****
The Telegraph

Wavelength picks ups where i am for international sales.

Wavelength Pictures has picked up the Irish documentary feature WHERE I AM for which it will commence its international sales campaign at the 2013 Cannes Film Festival. Pamela Drynan’s documentary which had its world premiere at the 2013 Slamdance Film Festival recalls a gay-bashing incident which shocked the Irish nation and deals with the victim’s efforts to come to terms with it 10 years on.

Where I Am

Directed by Pamela Drynan
Ireland / 2013 /70 min’s / in Colour / HD

Slamdance Film Festival, 2013, Documentary Feature Competition
Dublin Int’l Film Festival, 2013, Official Selection

Synopsis: Gay American writer Robert Drake is on the road to recovery – but this is a journey with a difference. Over ten years have passed since a violent and bloody attack by two young men in Sligo, Ireland one dark night left him paralyzed. It also stopped a writing career just as it was about to take off. From his home in Philadelphia we follow Robert as he takes a trip back to Ireland to confront the memories of what happened and lay the past to rest. Full of laughter, tears and literary types, this documentary captures Robert’s spirit and intention – that of moving on positively and taking the world with him.

In her feature film directorial debut, Pamela Drynan presents a powerfully inspiring documentary. The world would be a much better place if we all had Drake's positivity and his incredible ability to forgive.
John Ford - SLUG Magazine (Salt Lake City)

the stuart hall project premieres at sundance

The Stuart Hall Project the new documentary feature from acclaimed British filmmaker John Akomfrah received its international premiere at the 2013 edition of the Sundance Film Festival where it played in the World Documentary Competition.   Enthusiastic audience reactions were accompanied by very good reviews such as the following,

Blending archival footage, home movies, Hall’s television appearances and the music of Miles Davis, Akomfrah has created a film bursting with ideas that is also enormously entertaining, in no small measure due to the fact that Hall himself is such an engaging personality”
James Greenberg - The Hollywood Reporter.

“..directed by John Akomfrah, [The Film] is a visual and sonic excursion into the life and philosophies of the Jamaican-born intellectual, a finely crafted collage of memory, distilling hundreds of hours of archival footage of Hall, and exploring not only his life story but the story of the 20th century, in many ways intertwined with his own”. 
Zeba Blay - Indiewire

Stuart Hall is one of the most influential and esteemed cultural theorists of a generation. A thinker and commentator, his peers include other giants of political commentary such as Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, Alan Ginsberg, Michel Foucault and Gore Vidal.  John Akomfrah’s sweeping and majestic film THE STUART HALL PROJECT takes the viewer on a roller coaster ride through the upheavals, struggles and turning points that made the 20th century the century of campaigning, and of global political and cultural change.

north sea Texas is released in cinemas and on dvd around the world

North Sea Texas (Noordzee Texas) the debut feature from Flemish Belgian filmmaker Bavo Defurne, has been released in cinemas in the USA and France and on DVD in Poland during the Winter 2012/13 period.  DVD releases in France and USA will follow shortly after its run in cinemas.   These releases follows on from earlier cinema and DVD releases in Belgium, The Netherlands, Germany, the UK and Thailand.   It is now one of the most successful Flemish films of recent years.

During its time on the film festival circuit  NORTH SEA TEXAS picked up several prizes such as Montreal World Film Festival (FIPRESCO First Film Prize and Silver Zenith) , Rome Cinema Festival (Alice Nella Citta 13+ Award), Cape Winelands Film Festival (Best New Director) and Miami Lesbian & Gay Film Festival (HBO Jury Prize for Best Feature).   It was selected to open the  Zurich Pink Apple LBGT Festival,  Mix Milan and Mix Brazil (Sao Paolo and Rio de Janeiro) and as the closing night film for the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival which is Europe’s biggest LGBT festival.

Festival plays continue for North Sea Texas and in the first half of 2013 it has several showings in Australia, (Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane) as well as screenings in Athens - Greece, Tel Aviv -Israel, and Quebec City - Canada.

NORTH SEA TEXAS is a Flemish-Belgian production adapted from a novel called This Is Everlasting by André Sollie.  It’s a heartwarming coming of age story that follows a teenage boy’s search for love, with his affections turning toward Gino, the rugged, motorcycling boy next door.