The Winning Pitch (Literally) Siobhan Schwartzberg at Encounters Fresh Flix.

Good afternoon! Happy new year and all the associated festivities, I hope you all enjoyed the classic Christmas films on TV, I saw It’s A Wonderful Life at least 4 times.

First up is to tell you all how much of an amazing time we had at IDFA 2011! Between us we saw many great films including Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film, which was a really interesting idea perfectly executed.

In case you don’t remember, Alex Nevill and Mawaan Rizwan, two fantastic young media makers, came with us and took part in the IDFA academy. They had some wonderful things to say about the experience, from how it provided them with ‘a fascinating insight into how filmmakers across the world are telling stories as well the issues they are facing’ to how ‘the opportunity to exchange ideas and opinions with fellow filmmakers from all over Europe was paramount to me and I found myself involved in some incredibly insightful discussions that will affect my filmmaking practice for a long time to come.’ Definitely a positive experience.

While we were at IDFA, we also managed to split our workforce in two, and run 2 events in the UK as well! Firstly we had the We The People Film Festival Youth Film for Development Day, which involved the screening of short fiction and non-fiction films from across the world, including a couple of Doc Next Network films, with MODE Istanbul’s Scavenger picking up the second prize in the awards! We also hosted our first #tweetapitch competition, in which 6 finalists pitched their documentary ideas. All of the pitches showed flair and ingenuity, but there has to be a winner, and ours was talented young filmmaker Mat Ortega, who won a £500 bursary to make a film documenting the stories of recovered drug addicts in San Patrignano, who have transformed their lives and now impact the world through the arts.

That night, Noel then sped across the country to Bristol, to get ready for The Winning Pitch at Encounters Short Film Festival, in which 3 different finalists from a different twitter competition pitched their different documentary ideas to a different panel of experts for a different prize! Confusing right? Well this time the winner was Siobhan Schwartzberg of Black Mountain Films, who will be jetting off to one of our partners for a film workshop in the near future!

So what’ve we got coming up I hear you cry. Well, on the 14th January we have our young filmmakers session at the London Short Film Festival. We’re running a panel discussion on what the point of short films are, and why young people should be making them as well as screening a selection of short films themed around the subject of growing up and coming-of-age. For more information point your browser at this link right here.

Exciting right? Well that’s not all! We’re also heading up to Glasgow Youth Film Festival in February for another round of #tweetapitch, then the 18th and 19th February is our 5th BFI Future Film Festival! We’ve got a packed programme of events, but it’s all still under-wraps at the moment, so check back here in a couple of weeks for an update!

That was a bit of an epic post, so congratulations for making it to the end! As a reward check out Train of Thought by Leo Bridle and Ben Thomas. This short won our award for best animation at the festival last year, and impressed us so much that Leo is making the trailer for this years’ Future Film Festival so keep an eye out for that!

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