08-02-12 / RETROSPECTIVE IN BERLIN
This coming Saturday, the 8th Berlin International Directors Lounge will feature a two-part retrospective of my films, split into drama-based and music-based work. The music section will feature two world premieres: my new music video for Swimming's Mining for Diamonds, and the documentary Binaural Swimming (Beach), which will also be screening in a bespoke cellar space with headphones for the complete binaural experience.

04-02-12 / TAMPERE FILM FESTIVAL / CLERMONT FERRAND / PANTHER DANCE
Jam Today has just been selected for competition at the excellent Tampere Film Festival in Finland.

Just back from the massive, snowy festival that is Clermont Ferrand. I gave up feeling guilty about missing screenings after the first two days because it just isn't possible to do anything but scratch the surface of the vast schedule of programmes. Trying to catch up with so many of the other attendees doesn't help matters when just about everyone you've ever met at any other festival is there. Despite Jam Today screening every day I only managed to dash into one showing and dash out again.

Highlights of the very few films I did manage to see were Robert Morgan's Bobby Yeah (UK), Grzegorz Jaroszuk's Opowiesci Z Chlodini (Frozen Stories) (Poland), and Philipp Kaessbohrer's Armadingen (Germany), all of which were comedic. Lowlights were the filmmaker staying in the next room, who appeared to be addicted to watching noisy films with either cowboys, kung-fu or explosions in the early hours of every morning.

My latest video in The Petebox series, Panther Dance, is now online (see below). This one is particularly special as it has always been my favourite of his tracks and is the reason we became acquainted all those summers ago. I always intended to film a promo for it and had an exciting idea but never found the time, so filming this went some way to make up for the project that never was.

 

26-01-12 / NEW INTERVIEW
Nip on over to the Write Shoot Cut site to find out what side of the bed I've been getting out of recently, plus plenty of other informative articles, videos and interviews with a whole host of talented film folk.

16-01-12 / 'SOFT' FACEBOOK PAGE
Soft now has a Facebook page, including (so far) a bunch of previously unseen production stills. There is a good reason for this, which shall be revealed at a slightly later date, but in the meantime please pass the link around to as many people as possible!

11-01-12 / 'WHO KILLED DEON' MOST AWARDED TV CAMPAIGN IN THE WORLD
Who Killed Deon was 2011's 'Most awarded TV campaign in the world' and also ranked 7th in the 'Top 25 campaigns across all media'. Heck.

04-01-12 / SHOTS MAGAZINE COVER & PROFILE
Well this can't be bad. A big profile in Shots magazine and the front cover of both the magazine itself and its accompanying DVD. Being the weighty, glossy publication that it is, it costs a whopping three-figure sum to buy, but you can see a quick scan of the interview here.

21-12-11 / THE PETEBOX 'FUTURE LOOPS' ALBUM & VIDEOS LAUNCH
So, here is the first of a series of promos I did for The Petebox. Starting today there will be a new promo every two weeks, one for every track off his debut album Future Loops. I must be mental...

20-12-11 / 'SOFT' ON NEW DVD COMPILATION
Following on from Soft's recent popularity on Vimeo (thanks to the Vimeo staff who featured it on the homepage), it has now been included on the new Wholpin DVD magazine. Mine arrived in the post this morning and it seems to be a right fancy little package, featuring an all-in-one gatefold DVD sleeve/booklet with eleven short films and interviews with the directors. I can't speak for any of the titles yet but I shall have to watch it over the festive period and report back with more reasons to buy one. In the meantime, Merry Christmas y'all.

12-12-11 / NEW AWARD FOR 'JAM TODAY' / CLERMONT-FERRAND / LEUVEN
Lots of good news at once, woooop! Jam Today just won the Ron Holloway award at Tirana International Film Festival in Albania. It is an award in memory of the late critic and film historian who attended the festival a number of times, and the blurb is that the award is for a director who "continues shooting short films without falling into commercialism, always supporting innovation and originality". That is really quite lovely.

Jam has also just been selected for competition at Clermont-Ferrand in France, the biggest of the big and a huge honour. I could have fallen off my chair when I received the incoming email entitled selection result and said to myself "oh yeah, here we go again...".

And I keep forgetting to mention that last month Soft screened in Baghdad, of all places. Iraq Short Film Festival, don't you know...

Leuven Short Film Festival in Belgium was great. What nice people, nice food, nice beer... It was a shame my attendance was only for two days and I got my screening date wrong, arriving one day after. It was the first time Jam Today had screened with new English subtitles, after many reports of the dialogue being difficult to understand for international audiences. I would have been interested to see if it made any notable difference, alas, perhaps another time. Apart from the Westmalle Tripel beer (and new discovery Orval), my main reason for attending was to catch Nicolas Provost's retrospective and finally see the missing titles I had previously only read about. Excellent.L

08-12-11 / 'CHOOSE A DIFFERENT ENDING' RELAUNCHED !?!
I'm not quite sure who the Metropolitan Police are trying to kid when the Choose a Different Ending campaign was so successful two years ago, but they have just relaunched it again with the bizarre claim that it is new.

24-11-11 / 'JAM TODAY' WINS AT ENCOUNTERS!
Late reporting this but Jam Today just won Best British Film at Encounters International Film Festival in Bristol on Saturday. So soon after the award in Brest, absolutely amazing. I got the call just as a massive German sausage was put down in front of me in Berlin, so as far as moments go, that was a pretty perfect one. Unfortunately I left Encounters for Germany the day before the awards, so I missed the celebrations.

The best thing ever happened in Bristol. One of my genuine heroes, John Kricfalusi (of Ren & Stimpy fame), drew my caricature. It's a bit of a rude one though and probably not appropriate to put up here.

15-11-11 / 'JAM TODAY' WINS IN FRANCE / 'WHO KILLED DEON' WINS FIVE AWARDS
I am very proud to say that young Oliver Woollford scooped the Best Actor gong for his performance in Jam Today at Brest European Short Film Festival in France.

After the nightmare I had failing to make it to this particular festival last year (see the entry dated 11-11-10) I was determined to attend this time and I'm so glad I did. The first thig that really struck me was the sheer size of the theatre, not to mention how full it was, and then I noticed how young a lot of the audience were, which is really encouraging for short film in general. It's not just Hollywood for these teenagers. The audiences clapped along to the festival trailer and went wild when it ended on the festival logo, and all in all there was much enthusiasm and good cheer. I've never seen a jury having such a good laugh together. Here is a pic of me with festival programmer and super-nice-fella Massimiliano Nardulli (in the middle) and David Procter (Director of Photography on Jam Today).

Brest itself seems quite mad, with drunken punch-ups occuring nightly in the street, so when somebody told me that this is the part of Brittany on which Asterix was based it all made perfect sense. There were no jowly faces with oversized moustaches but there was plenty of Pif! Poff! T-chac! going on (the noises of a typical Asterix brawl). One small village of indomitable Gauls still holds out against the Romans... hehe.

Of the films I did see, favourites were Jeroen Annokkee's Sugar (Netherlands), Anca Miruna Lazarescu's Silent River (Romania - liked it even better this time around), Magnus Arnesen's Sing Me to Sleep (Poland), and for sheer nutsness - Sylvia Guillet's downright odd Le Vivier (France).

In different news, Who Killed Deon won five more awards, including the GRAND PRIX (wooop) at the 2011 BIMAS, plus two Golds and a Silver at the 2011 London International Awards.

09-11-11 / PHOTOGRAPHY BACK ONLINE
The photography section is now online, featuring an eclectic mix of images from as far back as 1992 to the present. It is displayed via Flickriver, requiring you to scroll down as the image stream keeps expanding.

27-10-11 / MORE AWARDS FOR 'WHO KILLED DEON'
Who Killed Deon won a gold and three silvers at the 2011 Campaign BIG Awards last night.

24-10-11 / AWARDS FOR 'WHO KILLED DEON'
Just found out that Who Killed Deon won two silvers at the Kinsale Sharks advertising awards in Ireland..t

17-10-11 / NEW BINAURAL DOCUMENTARY
To mark today's release of Swimming's smashing new single Neutron Wireless Crystal, here is a second binaural film documenting the specially recorded version of it, which we shot in Easter. It also features the excellent Mining for Diamonds (the flip side of the new single) plus a host of other Swimming tracks. If you enjoyed the first binaural film then you should definitely check this out.

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