It’s that time of year again, summer is drawing to a close and that can only mean one thing…that’s right – the return of the Encounters Film Festival here. Commencing on September 16th and running until the 21st, the short film gathering in Bristol, UK this year offers its attendees a wealth of short film screenings, complimented by an industry forum. As the UK representative for Short of the Week, I’m not spoiled with the huge amount of festivals my US counterparts are, so for me (and probably a lot of other UK-based short film fans) festivals like Encounters are one of the cinematic highlights of the year. Taking a look at what the 2014 edition has to offer, Short of the Week spoke to Festival producer Rich Warren about the industry forum and also picked out some of our favourite short films from this year’s selection.

Rich Warren, Festival producer: “This year the Industry Forum will consist of panels, masterclasses and workshops as well as competitive and guest screenings and will be focused on 3 daily themes – Fusion, Festivals and Forms. On the fusion day we will be exploring the increase in convergence between practitioners from different fields with insight from Nexus and Rovio. The second day of the forum will be looking at the role film festivals play in the 21st century with guest speakers from the international festival and distribution industries. For the final day we will be looking at the form as a development platform from the feature to the micro-short with input from YouTube and Depict amongst others.”

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SotW Picks – Our highlights from the 2014 selection of short films:



Michael Pearce: Keeping Up with the Joneses

Click to Watch Trailer

Keeping Up with the Joneses

Dir: Michael Pearce
Website | Vimeo

Synopsis: MP’s wife Celia discovers her husband’s true colours when she is taken hostage by his criminal business associates.

Director’s Statement: Keeping Up with the Joneses is about a politicians wife who is kidnapped by two vengeful gangsters. But what attracted me to the script was the deeper engine at work under the surface; it’s essentially about two people on the precipice of a mid-life crisis, both are existentially evaluating their lives, they just happen to be a gangster and kidnapee. A quote from Kurt Vonnegut ‘We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be’ became my guiding theme. I wanted to look behind the masks the characters present to the world, to explore the disturbing and abnormal behind the everyday, and the banality and wryness behind the sinister and violent.

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Monkey_Love_Experiments01

Click to Watch Trailer

Monkey Love Experiments

Dir: Ainslie Henderson & Will Anderson
Website | Ainslie – Twitter | Will – Twitter

Synopsis: In 1968, in the run up to the moon landing, Nasa are sending monkeys into space. Gandhi, a bright, hopeful and poorly parented monkey watches from his cage in the laboratory of a famous american
psychologist.

Director’s Statement: Monkey Love Experiments is a film that wonders about love, progress, and what falls outside our vision as we make towards our goals.

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Bradford Halifax London Francis Lee

Click to Watch Trailer

Bradford Halifax London

Dir: Francis Lee
Website | Twitter | YouTube

Synopsis: On the 10:22 train from Bradford to London Dad looses his rag, pregnant Mam concocts a surprise whilst their teenage daughter aches from embarrassment on just another ‘typical family’ outing…

Director’s Statement:Bradford Halifax London is a 9-minute comedy drama about a family in stress catching the train from Yorkshire to London. The short was shot in one single take, with one locked off camera position and with no edit to help facilitate the viewer being a voyeur to the narrative action.

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10177themissingscarf

Click to Watch Trailer

The Missing Scarf

Dir: Eoin Duffy
Website | Twitter | Vimeo

Synopsis: Albert the Squirrel makes a startling discovery … an empty space where once his favourite scarf lay. He heads off into the forest only to find everyone else is preoccupied with worries of their own. He helps who he can before moving on but never seems to get any closer to his goal. Ultimately, Albert’s
problem is put in perspective by the friends he helped and the problems they faced and overcame together.

Director’s Statement: My first short-film, On Departure, and then The Missing Scarf were created back to back. Both were centred around the same event, a recent death in my family. The first was an emotional display of the event; while the second The Missing Scarf dealt with the aftermath. Primarily the seemingly amplification of everyday fears – fear of the unknown, failure, rejection and finally death. The film’s script mirrors my internal debate on the subject – comparing the pros and cons of each, allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions.

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As Encounters is one of those festivals that doesn’t see online availability as a reason not to select a short, the festival also features a number of excellent films that are already available for viewing (and a few already featured on Short of the Week):

To see more of the Encounters films available to watch online, be sure to visit their Vimeo channel and like your favourite.