We’re honored to announce that Radiostan, after screening at 24 festivals over 2 years, winning prizes and special mentions, being acquired by Canal+ and distributed by Future Shorts has been invited to be part of the permanent factual collection in the British film Institute’s archive. This means that this wee film with a budget of a few hundred pounds (mainly travel costs) is now officially part of British film history!

Radiostan to be part of the Factual collection at BFI

Don’t ask me how but after 3 years of auditions coordinated in the UK for Cirque du Soleil we are now official Casting Partners for Europe which means that in the years to come we’ll have the pleasure of attending, coordinating and filming many more great auditions held by talent scout Marc-André Roy. It’s a bit of a departure from our usual film work but we are nonetheless thrilled and flattered by this opportunity!

Ok, we’ve been a bit lax with bigging-up Finding Josephine’s successes. Whie we weren’t looking (or rather we were busy with our day-to-day lives Finding Josephine got into various festivals and in some cases has already screened at them:

DOXA Documentary Film Fest Vancouver – May 2013

Southside Film Festival, Glasgow – May 2013

April 2013 saw me teaching Documentary film-making in a University in the border town of Gorizia in Notrth-Eastern Italy to some very bright and motivate students who unfortunately are stuck in a loop of theoretical classes without many opportunities to get films actually made. But we changed all this! Starting from “What is a documentary?” through, pitching skills, theatre-style exercises to develop team work and confidence into development and production they managed in just over a week to produce thought-provoking and intelligent documentaries making me a very proud teacher… Nice one guys. Good luck on your path I hope I showed you some new routes to explore . Special thanks to Ludovica Fales of Kitchen Sink Collective who assisted me throughout the course and made the whole thing possible with her can-do attitude and enthusiasm!

This is the poster for the Screening of the guys’ films. The theme was “The Border” but we asked them to explore the concept and they certainly did!

#findingjosephine reaches 50,000 views on Youtube!!!

FINDING JOSEPHINE is now online as part of Why Poverty’s launch.

I’m very proud of this little documentary about a big subject.

Please share and tweet #findingjosephine #whypoverty.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWADjA1hMug[/youtube]

Radiostan is still getting picked up 2 whole years since it was made! This crazy little short, shot and edited over km3,500 in 4 weeks in Central Asia and Russia and costing £500 never ceases to surprise me… This time it’s Art Gallery TenderPixel in London screening Radiostan for a curated program at 18:30 on October 9th.

If you haven’t seen this film yet then download a wee program here and get yourself out there to see experimental shorts. I wish I’d been to all the places this film has been, I would’ve visited 4 continents in 2 years averaging a new country a month! Just goes to show that big budgets and lots of time and equipment aren’t everything…

Oh, and this is the event’s facebook page:

https://www.facebook.com/events/246172962172346/

We’re very pleased to have collaborated with Leith Agency’s on this very worthwhile and humorous Breast Cancer Awareness video. Please share to raise awareness on this important issue!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yNKbmif0M6c[/youtube]

Changing your account to an ethical bank is much easier than you think. Your money will no longer fund arms, fossil fuel and irresponsible investment banking. You will make the world a better place and send a clear message to our banks: Ethical banking should be normal banking! We procrastinated for a long time before leaving RBS and BoS but now it’s done and we feel much better already.

You can follow the link to switch to Coop Bank or find an ethical bank near you which you’re happy with:

http://www.co-operativebank.co.uk/servlet/Satellite/1199261361884,CFSweb/Page/CFSCtplStandard

So, somehow in the middle of the night with a few clicks Polifilm has graduated to its next incarnation and I have somehow gone from being self-employed to my own employee! We’re now ready to take on bigger projects, bigger budgets and bigger teams! Happy days and welcome Polifilm Media Ltd.

Hanging out in a day care centre in Livvi

So far we’re deep in research and recces to prepare for our film commissioned for Livingston’s 50th anniversary. So far when I’ve been telling people I’m making a film about Livingston the instinctive reaction has been: “Why?”

Well, I must say this started as a corporate gig but I’ve since discovered that the commissioners are actually after a deep and thought-provoking film about this fascinating town which at first glance appears not to have a history of it’s own. It is in fact a great mosaic of people and stories that have been thrown together by circumstance. the creative juices are flowing here at HQ…

We’re so proud to be part of fire-theatre history with our promo&doco about Festa del Fuoco di Stromboli. This amazing yearly festival takes place on Europe’s most active volcano on the island of Stromboli in the middle of the Mediterranean. The videos were a year in the making squeezed between all the other pressing engagements for Polifilm but we worked hard with visionary August Shuldes, the founder, brain and heart of the festival, not to make the usual trite promotional documentary and to capture some of the magic of the event… I hope we have succeeded!

I was honored and excited to be invited to be a jury member at this year’s Concorto Short Film Festival in Pontenure (PC) Italy. Apart from their amazing hospitality with lovely hotels, food and wine for the full week, I was pleased to see a large grassroots support for this highly intelligent and ambitious festival in the small town of Pontenure in the middle of the Po valley. The selection was amazing and we found it quite hard to pick the winners but after hours of debate we pulled it off… I strongly recommend this festival if you ever get the chance. back to rainy Scotland now…

Me and Mango on our way out...

Finding Josephine is now complete!
Here’s the trailer if you need a memory refreshment.

Commissioned by Why Poverty this personal short in which Mango (my daughter) and I travel to Uganda to find the girl we sponsor will have 500.000 potential viewers with over 50 broadcasters involved in the project’s funding. I’ll post worldwide broadcast dates as soon as I know them.

[vimeo]http://vimeo.com/37530670[/vimeo]

THIS TRAILER IS NOT SUITABLE FOR MINORS

Here’s a wee teaser for ART of TORTURE, Leo Bruges‘ first feature length documentary.

Jeff is a self-harming artist from Glasgow who has been re-enacting and painting life-size crucifixions of people of all ages and backgrounds to draw attention to issues of human rights abuse. Now, as a centre-piece for his project he is planning an ambitious escapade in the Middle East…

NOTE: One of the side effects of our work as documentary filmmakers is that sometimes we lose the access to characters which we have built so carefully… Art of Torture seems to be on hold for the time being…

Radiostan is to screen in the 13th Annual Dawson City International Short Film Festival, April 5-8. The festival is set in the intimate environment  of Dawson City. A town that still retains its Gold Rush charm and is surrounded by the Canadian wilderness. With some luck the Northern Lights will also make an appearance. I so wish I could go all the places the Radiostan tape has been!!!

We’re very excited about our imminent trip to Uganda to meet Josephine and her family.

We’ve sponsored Josephine for the past 2 years and we’ve decided we’d like to make a personal link with her beyond the direct debit that leave our bank every month, so we started to do what we do best… we started filming. Why Poverty saw the trailer and thought the idea is worthwhile. Now we’re preparing for our shoot in a small village north of Kampala and we’re of course very excited to finally meet Josephine in person!

The film, produced by North Isle Productions and the fantastic Lili Sandelin will be completed by May. Watch this space.

Fa piacere sapere che un film prodotto quattro anni fa sta ancora girando sul grande schermo.

Il 27 febbraio al Cinema Massimo 2 ci sará una rassegna dei corti che hanno vinto il Premio Chicca Richelmy allo Spazio Torino del TTF. Se ancora non lo avere visto é un’ottima opportunitá.

It’s great to know that a short film, made four years ago is not rotting on a shelf.

Archive of Dreams will be screening again Monday 27 february, 2012 in Turin Italy as part of a showcase of Turin Film Festival’s winners over the past few years.

Archive of Dreams to screen in the great Cameo Cinema in screen 1 before the 20:40 screenings of The Artist. It’s the chance to see two homages to great cinema.

Archive of Dreams won the Jim Poole award in 2009. Part of that prize was the chance to screen before a feature for one week.

The silver Mikeldi (I hope they'll post it over

After going to over 25 festivals, Radiostan has won its first very own prize: the SILVER MIKELDI at Bilbao’s 53rd ZiNEBI International Film Festival!

We are so pleased and flattered that such a prestigious and long-running festival would give recognition to our little short but there you go!!!
Special Thanks go out to Guillaume and Tanya Petrk who made cinetrain (and consequently Radiostan) happen, to Joona Pettersson (camera), Elena Petrosyan (sound) and Timur Yuldashev (production manager) for being the amazing Kinomadi crew and of course to all the Cinetrain Easy-cool gang who made that experience even more special!!!

Int6: Home Ground on Thursday 17^th November 9:00pm, Watershed Cinema 3

Int3: Home Ground on Friday 18^th November 12:00pm, Watershed Cinema 1

Babytrapped, my latest Doc will be screening on Current TV (Sky183/Virgin155) at 10pm on the 14th of November and at 9pm on the 21st (and we’ll hopefully have an Edinburgh venue sorted for the second broadcast with the documentary’s characters present for a Q&A session). Current TV have their super-TV trailer up online already! Check it out here.

We are doing a wee happy dance in the PoliFilm office today after finding out that Why Poverty? an international campaign involving dozens of filmmakers and broadcasters, has decided to back us for Finding Josephine a short film about charity, what it does for those receiving, what it does for those giving and what it’s all about anyway.

I’m happy to team up with amazing Lili Sanderlin from North Isle Productions with whom I’ve wanted to work for years and I’m looking forward to the family trip (and film shoot) to Uganda in February and to actually meet Josephine, the 5-year old girl we’ve been  exchanging letters with for the past 2 years!!!

Radiostan’s latest splash comes from “across the pond”: judges at Syracuse Film Festival in the US (www.syrfilmfest.com) felt a special mention was called for in the experimental category and awarded a citation to Radiostan.

Happy days!

PS: I know they wrote I’m from England in the winner’s list… they’ll correct that asap I’m sure… I didn’t hesitate to point the error out in my thank you email.

Check out Radiostan’s screening details at Bristol’s Encounters Film Festival here.

Watershed 3: 9pm Nov17th

Watershed 1: 12pm Nov18th

TOMMY’S and POLIFILM’s FIRST EVER BROADCAST!!!

How exciting! After the great news of Radiostan being bought by Canal+ in April Current TV got in there and in record time got us to finish the post-production for When Life Thrown Lemons (now Babytrapped)… and get in Polifilm’s (and my) first ever broadcast.

So, it’s now official: Babytrapped will on November 21st @ 22:00  on Current TV 183 on Sky and 155 on Virgin Media (only in the UK I’m afraid). Anyone without cable TV or living elsewhere WILL get a chance to see it in the near future.

What an honour… even a great documentary-watching nation like Finland has picked Radiostan for their official selection. Radiostan will go on to tour up to 7 cities in Finland throughout 2012. Hurray!!! I hope to get a chance to go visit… not sure though. Busy-busy here making films.

The Encounters Short Film Festival in Bristol is the largest of its kind n the UK. We are very pleased to have been selected for the 2011 edition of this great festival!

If you’re in or around Bristol between the 16th and the 20th of November come check out this cracking wee short at it’s 23rd Festival!

I’m always pleased when my work gets seen in Italy, which I realise now, is really my country. So I was very pleased when Concorto (who’s organisers I met at clermont Ferrand) sent me an email stating that Radiostan is one of the finalists of their festival.

The Festival will run from the 20th to the 27th of August in Pontenure near Piacenza Italy. Check this link out if you think you might attend.

Radiostan has been selected for its 15th International Film Fest, this time in the Thai International Short Film Festival to be held between the 18th and the 28th of August. If any of you are traveling in South East Asia at that point then why not break up the sticky Bangkok days with an air-conditioned screening of my latest short?