Pantalla Fantasma 4 Programme Announced

The programme of the 2015 Pantalla Fantasma festival has been announced. I was on the selection committee for this edition along with Sandra Cuesta and festival director Jorge Núñez (who, by the way, is also a terrific filmmaker in his own right).

The festival will take place in Bilbao, January 19th-24th. It is defined as: 'a film festival open to strange, border, extreme, outsider audiovisual pieces with a boundary, experimental and subversive nature, and a minimum of 40 minutes length'.

Full details here.

Films selected:

Smolt (Michael Higgins, 2013, 63′)
O’er The Land (Deborah Stratman, 2009, 51′)
Flores y rayas (Arcadi Ballester, 2014, 40′)
Boo Demon vs La cerveza de muerte. Beer of death (Sean Brown, 2014, 83′)
Return of Suspicion (Dean Kavanagh, 2014, 93′)
Historia de amor en clave de sol (Inés García, 2014, 40′)
90 años sin dormir (Juan Carlos Gallardo, 2013, 80′)
Valparaíso, 2011. Observaciones de un turista (Rubén García López, 2012, 50′)
Some Must Watch, While Some Must Sleep (Michael Higgins, 2012, 61′)
Cartas desde Parliament Square (Carlos Serrano Azcona, 2014, 53′)
HSP: There Is No Escape From The Terrors Of The Mind (Rouzbeh Rashidi, 2013, 120′)

Special sessions:
La tumba de Bruce Lee (Canódromo Abandonado, 2013, 95′)
Manos: The Hands of Fate (Harold P. Warren, 1966)

This Monday...

Full information here.

Forbidden Symmetries (excerpt) in The Austrian Film Museum

A section of the collaborative feature film Forbidden Symmetries (2014) will play at The Austrian Film Museum on Wednesday 26th November 18:30 pm as part of Daniel Fitzpatrick's contribution to 'The Invisible Cinema – Film, Art, History, and the Museum' (Lectures and Conversations: Nicole Brenez, Chris Dercon, Noam M. Elcott, Daniel Fitzpatrick, Lars Henrik Gass, Siegfried Mattl, Winfried Pauleit and Jacques Rancière).

Expended Cinema – Curating Cinema’s Futures During an Era of Transition (Daniel Fitzpatrick)

“In relation to cinema’s digital futures a time for prognosis seems now to have passed, apparently all we need do to understand the shape of this digital future is look around us. In spite of the rhetoric that initially supported this transition it can seem that the digital ‘revolution’ (an awkward term for a transformation that has witnessed a large degree of unreflective acquiescence) has perhaps not led to the ‘opening up’ of possibility it once promised but rather to a further calcification of ‘what cinema is’, at least if we are to consider it in terms of its more visible, more mainstream iterations. While the dematerialisation of cinema now seems like a distant memory its despecification gathers apace. The following article will consider several instances of curatorial practice iterated in relation to the cinema’s recent transitional era. It will include references to gallery exhibitions like Hall of Mirrors (MOCA, LA 1996) and Future Cinema (ZKM, 2002) alongside curatorial projects realised in relation to the cinema space (Kubelka Was ist Film? project, 1996-). Each of these instances is considered in relationship with the emergence of a digital future which threatens to subsume existing understandings of cinema, almost entirely.”

More info here.

Ludo Mich Documentary in Need of Support

A very intriguing project is seeking support on Indiegogo, a documentary on Ludo Mich by Irish musician and filmmaker W. R. Stewert. Described as the "wildman Belgian Fluxus artist, filmmaker and performer", a good portrait of Mich is certainly a film I'd like to see.

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/ludo-is-fantastic

Iranian EFS @ Cork Film Festival

Two must-see programmes of Iranian Experimental Film Society work playing at Cork Film Festival this weekend!

Full information here and here.

Cloud of Skin: Principal Photography Wrapped

Principal photography has now wrapped on my upcoming feature Cloud of Skin. The above photo shows the core team - Dean Kavanagh (who said you should never let your leading man also serve as producer?), Rouzbeh Rashidi (ready for action!) and myself (ready for coffee...) - preparing to unleash some madness. A huge thank you to Dean, Rouzbeh and leading lady Eadaoin O'Donoghue for embracing said madness with such enthusiasm, skill and efficiency.

To have a peak at a few stills from the shoot:  

http://cloudofskin.tumblr.com/

Cloud of Skin: Here We Go!

Principal photography on Cloud of Skin kicks off tomorrow... Watch this space!