8:00am Monday 8th February 2010
ONE of the most eagerly awaited events on the entertainment calendar arrives later this month as Borderlines Film Festival returns for the eighth time.
Not only is this year’s festival earlier than in previous years, opening on February 26, it is also bigger, both in the number of venues featured and the number of screenings of an astonishingly wide variety of films.
Director David Gillam has once again brought together a programme of movies that will leave film fans spoilt for choice – from classics to blockbusters, potential Oscar-winners to locally made films.
His own Director’s Dozen includes last years’ winner of the Oscar for best foreign film, Departures, and the film that’s being hotly tipped to take the same award this year, A Prophet, which has already taken the prize for best film at the London Film Festival.
Borderlines offers an unrivalled opportunity throughout Herefordshire and Shropshire to see more than 80 films, some of which will only be screened in selected London cinemas and at Borderlines, explaining why it has become unmissable to so many.
This is, though, a festival that is about more than what you can see on screen, with debates and opportunities for young people to get involved in filmmaking, through Rural Media’s Young Shoots workshops.
Two sessions on Saturday, February 27 and Saturday, March 6 offer the chance to see a great film, Let the Right One In for older teens and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs for the eight to 12-year-olds, then try out some of the techniques for themselves.
Anyone fascinated by the increasing trend towards ‘citizen journalism’ will be keen to catch Here Comes Everyone : Citizen Journalism in the Digital Age, a debate on the impact citizen journalism is having on political life globally and locally. The day brings together social media practitioners and print and broadcast journalists to consider practice, voice, impartiality and access, and includes a session entitled Get Local featuring Guardian journalist Matthew Engel and Hereford’s Conservative candidate Jesse Norman with contributions from the anarchist Hereford Heckler and online local news site, Kington Blackboard.
The local element that is so integral to Borderlines includes this year Rural Media’s latest ambitious project, a community film production called Still Life, made in Bromyard last year and confronting issues of isolation and identity in a rural market town where people quickly learn to move on rather than move away. “It is work that deserves a wide and appreciative audience,”
said Lord Puttnam.
Also on offer are short films written and directed by Herefordshire filmmaker Joe Jenkins: Gaia: All Things are Connected; A View from the Past, a nostalgic look at life around Leominster through rarely seen films from the 1930s to the 70s; and Young Farmers, a documentary following members of Herefordshire Young Farmers Clubs over a year.
George Clooney, Bette Davis, Viggo Mortenson, Jack Nicholson, Colin Firth, Penelope Cruz and Audrey Tautou are just a handful of the stars you can catch at Borderlines, but there are many more whose names may be less familiar but whose performances promise to be unforgettable.
For full details of the Borderlines programme for 2010, visit borderlinesfilmfestival.org.
Brochures are available at The Courtyard and Ludlow Assembly Rooms’ box offices.
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