Today saw the Slurpy Studios team visiting one of the newest of the British festivals; the East End film festival. This festival, only in it’s second year already boasted a varied and well thought out program of films, including a Polish animation event and films made specifically about the East End of London, not to mention the 32nd appearance of our very own ‘Death by Scrabble.’
Some excellent films featured in the program that we were able to attend. After much debate on the train ride home we decided that Johnny Kelly’s film “Procrastination” about the same subject was the favourite, for its all to familiar behaviours and well thought out design. A film that goes so far as to embody everything that it discusses, and touched a nerve with the entire audience.
Also on the Slurpy Studios list of really very excellent films were ‘Like me, only better’ by Martin Pickles and Sally Arthur’s ‘A to Z.’ Both are RCA films (unless I’m wrong, and I could quite easily be) and both entertained while educating- something we very much admire.
‘John and Karen’ by Matthew Walker is a film that I can find something else to love about every time I see it, but it suffers from the unfortunate condition of having beaten ‘Death by Scrabble’ to the grand prize at a different festival, so sadly we’re sworn to hate it forever.
All together an excellent program of films, and the East End festival were a joy to work with from start to finish. All too often festivals are falling over themselves in an attempt to get people to submit their films, but then don’t feel the need to communicate with the film maker again until the day before the festival, when they mention that your film is in the program and would you like a free ticket…oh you can’t come? Shucks.
The festival will probably never be one of the big ‘must attend’ English festivals, but then neither does it have pretensions to be. It’s a small film festival, which aimed to increase local resident’s exposure to a wide variety of films, and in that it succeeds marvellously. Just don’t go there expecting to meet Nick Park or Joanna Quinn.
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