The BFI Film Academy and Screen Education Edinburgh are offering an intensive course in filmmaking for 16-19 year olds who live in the South East of Scotland. Continue reading Screen Education Edinburgh seeks talented youngsters for BFI Film Academy
Tag: cinema
Saturday night at the movies
Saturday 30 January 2 – 9pm
Madelvic House
Expect the unexpected at Mountain Film Festival
Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival 6 & 7 February
Why do people go to the mountains? You’ll find many different answers at the 13th Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival, which runs Saturday 6 and Sunday 7 February. Continue reading Expect the unexpected at Mountain Film Festival
How to change the world … in Edinburgh!
New documentary tells the story of the birth of Greenpeace
My old mate Dave Woods has alerted me to a film made by his friend Jerry Rothwell he describes as ‘wonderful – it is a fabulous thing.’ High praise indeed … ‘How To Change The World‘ premieres at The Cameo on Wednesday 9 September at 8pm (also showing at Cineworld Edinburgh and Odeon Lothian Road).
How To Change The World tells the gripping story of the origins of Greenpeace. A Sundance 2015 award winner, the film draws on stunning unseen footage from the early days of the modern green movement.
In 1971 a brave group of young activists set sail from Vancouver in an old fishing boat. Their mission: to stop Nixon’s atomic bomb tests in Amchitka, a tiny island off the west coast of Alaska.
It was from these humble but courageous beginnings that the global organisation that we now know as Greenpeace was born. Chronicling the fascinating untold story behind the modern environmental movement, this gripping new film tells the story of eco-hero Robert Hunter and how he, alongside a group of like-minded and idealistic young friends in the ’70s, would be instrumental in altering the way we now look at the world and our place within it.
‘A real-life thriller with larger than life heroes‘ – Huffington Post
‘Tremendously inspiring, and by turns thrilling, comic, and shocking‘ – Slashfilm
‘Tremendously inspiring, and by turns thrilling, comic, and shocking‘ – Slashfilm
A panel discussion, broadcast live via satellite, follows the screening featuring legendary fashion designer and long-standing Greenpeace supporter Vivienne Westwood, director Jerry Rothwell, Robert Hunter’s daughter Emily Hunter and other special guests to be announced. The event will be hosted by Mariella Frostrup.
You can check out the trailer here: https://vimeo.com/
The Cameo Link: https://www.
Local project’s films to premiere at Filmhouse
Films produced by local young people screening at the Filmhouse this Saturday
Screen Education Edinburgh has announced that five short films -produced by an innovative new North Edinburgh partnership and made entirely by young people – will receive their premieres at the Edinburgh Filmhouse this Saturday (2 May).
The films will be shown with ten other shorts from their wider BFI Film Academy and CashBack for Creativity projects.
The North Edinburgh partnership, a joint initiative involving Screen Education Edinburgh and Total Craigroyston, with funding from CashBack for Creativity, encourages young people to get involved in filmmaking rather than crime. Five of the films to be shown during the special two hour event were made by young people who are at risk of offending or reoffending.
Irvine Welsh, Patron of Screen Education Edinburgh, said: “If you come from a disadvantaged area, the world can often seem to conspire against you, constraining your vision to the streets around you and the urgent here and now of simply getting by. Cinema is a wonderful tool in combating that horrible malaise, opening up windows into different worlds, and helping us to understand our own ones better through the broadening of our horizons. The skills you learn through being part of a committed team, working on a task that can create a little bit of magic are transferable to other areas of our life.”
The partnership works with groups of 11-19 year olds from the city’s Pilton and Muirhouse area – currently ranked the worst for crime in the whole south east of Scotland – teaching young people film making skills in the evenings. The initiative was set up to improve the lives of families living around Craigroyston Community High School and is a co-ordinated effort to encourage and stimulate young people’s interest in film when they might otherwise be out on the streets.
The short films were all written, directed, filmed and acted in by the youngsters. These films explore issues through drama and music videos including motorcycle theft, the feeling of being alienated, first love and peer pressure.
Graham Fitzpatrick, Creative Manager at Screen Education Edinburgh, said: “The Pilton and Muirhouse area experienced serious issues of crime involving youths, and sometimes children, throughout 2014.
“The aim of this scheme is to help young people engage and deal with their offending issues, whilst giving them positive activities throughout the week, particularly late evenings.”
James Riordan, Lead Youth Development Worker with the Alternative to Crime Project added; “Through being involved in diversionary activities and projects such as the film programme with Screen Education Edinburgh, Young People, who have been involved in anti-social/offending behaviour in North Edinburgh, have the opportunity to be part of something positive and to get a taste of new activities and skills they wouldn’t normally have access to.
“Through working with Screen Education Edinburgh the Group have learned to adapt to different scenarios which in turn has led to them increasing their levels of self-esteem, allowing them to develop as confident Young People”.
Screen Education Edinburgh (formerly Pilton Video) was founded in 2010 to help young people develop and express themselves through film making. Edinburgh born novelist, playwright, storyteller and screenwriter, Irvine Welsh became patron of Screen Education Edinburgh in March last year.
Screen Education Edinburgh is currently running three separate local projects. One, based at FACE North (Focussing on Alternative’s to Crime Edinburgh North) and POP (Preventative Opportunities Programme), is making film drama with groups of 14 to 19 year old males, whilst another focuses on music video production with 10-12 years olds in four local primary schools.
The third supports children and youth workers based out of the Muirhouse Millennium Centre, providing film skills training to the workers, helping them to support large groups of young people in their first forays into film production.
This partnership was funded through the CashBack for Creativity scheme, part of a wider £45 million Scottish Government initiative which reinvests the proceeds recovered from criminals for the benefit of young people.
Saturday’s event at the Filmhouse will showcase the films to parents, friends, the community, councillors and guests.
The screening will also incorporate films from all Screen Education Edinburgh’s CashBack for Creativity projects, including; Score Scotland, Panmure School, MYPAS Dalkeith, Bridges Project Musselburgh, Edinburgh Young Carers and from the advanced BFI Film Academy South East of Scotland initiative.
Film screening to support WaterAid charity
A recently-established Edinburgh group is to hold a special one-off screening of ‘Even the Rain’ (Tambien la Iluvia) to raise money for the international development charity WaterAid – and the film’s award-winning screenwriter Paul Laverty will host a question and answer session following the screening.
The screening will take place on Thursday 27 September at 7.30pm at SYHA Edinburgh Central, on Haddington Place, Leith Walk, and is the group’s first fundraising event for WaterAid, the charity which enables some of the world’s poorest people to gain access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene.
Even the Rain is a 2010 Spanish drama about Mexican director Sebastián (Gael García Bernal) and executive producer Costa (Luis Tosar) who travel to Bolivia to shoot a film depicting Christopher Columbus’s conquest. Sebastián and Costa unexpectedly land themselves in a moral crisis when they and their crew arrive at Cochabamba, Bolivia, during the intensifying 2000 Cochabamba protests, which their key native actor Daniel (Juan Carlos Aduviri) persistently leads. The film was directed by Icíar Bollaín, based on a screenplay by Paul Laverty.
The film’s central theme of the fundamental right to access safe and clean water, is also one of the principal aims of WaterAid. Angela Lafferty, a member of WaterAid’s Edinburgh local group and one of the event organisers, said: “For me, this event is not only about raising money but about reminding us all that we need water to live. We all use so much of it in our daily lives but many of us never think about where it comes from, who controls and manages it and how much it costs. One in eight of the world’s population are not as lucky as we are in Scotland, but we can change that!”
In the developing world, diarrhoeal diseases caused by poor sanitation and unclean water kill 4000 children every day – more than AIDS, malaria and measles combined. Just £15 can enable one person to access a lasting supply safe water, sanitation and hygiene. Funds raised at this special screening will enable WaterAid to transform the lives of some of the world’s poorest people throughout Africa, Asia and the Pacific Region. Tickets are £10 (including a glass of wine) and should be booked online at: www.eventelephant.com/eventherain
Telford Graduate films hit the heights
‘Curtain up! Dim the lights! We got nothing to hit but the heights!’ That was the blurb in the Edinburgh Filmhouse programme and Wednesday’s showing certainly lived up to it’s billing. Telford’s HND Creative Industries Television course graduation show will be the last ever – Edinburgh colleges merge this autumn – but this years’ students ensured that the final programme would be just as memorable as those that have gone before.
With drama, documentaries, animations and adverts the films covered a broad spectrum and provided a perfect showcase of the students’ talents. From the atmospheric opening drama ‘Hungover’ to final action film ‘The Street Fighter’ the theme was quality throughout.
There were some amazing ideas and imagination on show. A special mention to Emma Murray’s animation ‘Big Gus’, an everyday tale of a pair of pants! and Lewis Kyle, whose ‘You’re Dead’ provided the ‘shock horror’ gross moment of the evening! Michael Dobb’s ‘The Sound of Scent’ was a beautifully constructed documentary while Eve Jarron provided some light relief with ‘At Home With Dr. Devious’.
Winner of the Crtics Award, however, was Jack Kyle’s experimental movie ‘Gone But Not Forgotten’ (pictured above). Gloomy urban landscapes in Granton and Seafield shot from a moving vehicle, superb soundtrack … dark, desolate but very effective and a worthy winner.
Congratulation to all this year’s contributors – who knows what next year will bring, but it’s clear that the class of 2012 may now be gone, but certainly won’t be forgotten. Well done, everyone.