12-09-13 / MILAN FILM FESTIVAL / FESTIVAL NO.6
Another smashing time at Milano Film Festival - a bonus burst of cheeky summer as the chill arrived in the UK and, frankly, it's cack to be home. Aside from Stew & Punch screening in competition it was the festival's 18th anniversary, which meant nightly screenings of a 'platinum programme' of their favourite shorts from previous editions. This included screenings of Soft, What About the Bodies, What The and 10 Again. After Jam Today was rained off in 2011 it was most gratifying to finally see not one but two of my films on the open air screen. I even lugged a proper camera over there to capture the occasion. Many thanks to all of the festival staff for making me feel welcome, as always, and to my host Lucia for letting me stay in her lovely apartment.

A few films that stood out for me were Oscar Ruiz Navia's Solecito (Colombia), Jorge Lopez Navarrete's Little Block of Cement With Disheveled Hair Containing the Sea (Spain), Monia Chokri's An Extraordinary Person (Canada). And from the animated films: Anna Mantzaris & Eirik Gronmo Bjornsen's But Milk Is Important (Norway) and Nicolas de Leval Jezierski's Half You Met My Girlfriend (Germany).

Finally, if you happen to be attending Festival No.6 in Portmeirion this Friday (tomorrow, eek), I programmed the No.6 Short Film Cinema. Ten shorts from Norway, Sweden, Germany, USA, UK and Australia, handpicked on instinct for people who may not be used to seeing short films. Be warned that the show includes occasional graphic content so it's probably best if you don't bring the kids along.

23-08-13 / ANONIMUL: A FILM FESTIVAL IN PARADISE
There are some film festivals you return from with such an enormous sense of satisfaction, with memories you know you will keep forever and new friends you will stay in touch with. I'm not sure my words and photographs can justly illustrate the Anonimul experience. Stepping off the plane into 37 degree heat was a promising start, but then things just got better and better. And better. A relaxed afternoon and evening in Bucharest guaranteed a fresh head for the long journey the following morning: a four-hour drive east to take a one-hour speedboat ride up the Danube, to the festival location of Sfantu Gheorghe, described on the festival website as "a magical place, where the Danube meets the Black Sea, an unconventional, picturesque place out of time... with many flowers, sun, sand, vividly painted houses burst by the wind, with hand-made wooden decorations and reed roofs".

Our outward journey was an adventure in itself, with eighteen guests and their luggage (including musical instruments) packed into a minibus. Two hours into the journey, in the middle of parched nowhere, the engine made a snapping sound and a tyre blew. After a number of failed attempts to keep going we ended up stranded next to a sunflower field, munching on fresh seeds. Everyone was in great spirits and it was such an odd sight, all of us different nationalities, getting to know each other in this bizarre situation. When replacement transport arrived, we made it to the Danube and the speedboat set off. I was busy filming from the back of the boat when the driver put his foot down and my sunglasses were sucked from my face, spiralling into the river. My vampiric eyes prepared for the imminent three-day headache, but I was saved by the generosity of Italian director Aldo Iluniano (how cool is that name?) who gave up his own shades for the whole stretch. Thanks Aldo, you really did save me from a predicament.

The 'Green Village' complex, where we stayed for the duration, is again difficult to describe. Quite simply, I was on holiday, complete with swimming pool and the chirruping of crickets. We met the organisers, who were so lovely and apologetic about our ten-hour journey, even though we had already forgotten about it. I then found out that Stew & Punch was screening at 2am on the outdoor screen so I stuck around for it, just for the thrill of being able to see it projected underneath a vast milky way, not to mention the remains of the Perseids meteor shower. A beautiful experience. When I first heard about this festival several years ago there was much talk about the mosquitoes, and they were true to their reputation, though they couldn't mar the experience of being in such a mellow environment with equally mellow people (both guests and organisers).

A feature film from Emir Baigazin called Harmony Lessons (Kazakhstan) looked superb, with perfectly executed scenes of bullying demanding my attention, though I only saw parts of it and had to make myself leave in order to preserve the experience for future viewing. This was its Romanian premiere and it already won prizes in Berlin and Tribeca earlier this year. I can't wait to see it in full. Congratulations also to the charismatic Yuri Bykov (Russia) for winning the main prize for his feature The Major. I only caught the first thirty minutes but it's one of those openers that grabs you by the nuts and doesn't let go.

The Black Sea was only a twenty-minute walk away and on the last night we opted not to sleep so we could go and watch the sun rise. I honestly didn't want to leave and considered burying myself in the sand for a day or two. Alas, I didn't, and it was time to go spend a last night in Bucharest before returning home. The money-grabbing scumbags at WizzAir threatened to interrupt my good mood by stinging me for cash at the airport, then a flight full of typically embarrassing, borderline-retarded English 'lads' made me ashamed to be English. Finally, there was a dramatic finish when a young Romanian man was seized by police after getting off the plane, leaving his crying girlfriend at baggage reclaim. In summary though, if you are a filmmaker and you ever get the chance to visit Anonimul, take it without hesitation.

05-08-13 / UPCOMING SCREENINGS OF 'STEW & PUNCH' AND 'SOFT'
Stew & Punch will be screening at a few imminent festivals - Anonimul (Romania, August), Silhouette (Paris, September), Milano (Italy, September) and Encounters (Bristol, UK, September). Also, if you're based in or near Amsterdam, here is an interesting looking open air screening of Soft, happening next Friday. There is an accompanying interview (in Dutch) here. 

04-07-13 / WHAT ABOUT THE BODIES
Here's an old festival favourite from 2002 which became a benchmark for me in terms of stressful shoots. I'd always operated my own camera but on this one the ambition was bigger in terms of location, weather, stunts, tricks, and my first crane shot. I made the stupid mistake of thinking I could shoot it all in two days without accounting for the fact that it was almost winter and daylight was in short supply. On top of that there was the fickle climate of the English Lake District and a massive scribble of other problems, like a vintage car that didn't much like driving long distances. Ultimately, my team saved my ass by agreeing to return to the location three weeks later for next to nothing and shoot two more days, by which time I had edited the first half of the film. I learned a crapload on this bugger.

12-06-13 / 'STEW & PUNCH' WORLD PREMIERE AT IKFF HAMBURG
Another year, another Hamburg International Short Film Festival, and Stew & Punch was well received. Elsewhere, an audience member suffered some kind of seizure during a programme, and one crazy Russian fell asleep on the S-Bahn every night while travelling home, either waking at the airport or going back and forth for 4 hours on one occasion. As this happens to him so frequently, I think there might just be an amusing documentary to be discussed. Big thanks to the British Council & BFI for funding the trip!

My washing machine is rinsing the last of the Hamburg atmosphere from my clothes as I write this, and I may have to run a second cycle (okay, that sounds a bit weird but there is meaning in there somewhere). Alliteratively speaking, the key ingredients for this festival are sunshine, sausage, schnapps, and a shitload of shorts. Oh, and sleep deprivation. Sometimes the sun is missing but for 2013 all elements were very much present and correct. The festival surpassed their typically generous array of side programmes by exploiting several new locations within their extensive warehouse premises, whether it be outdoor walls or the nooks of a subterranean boiler room. It's difficult to imagine how they could squeeze in more films and I can't help wondering what next year's 30th anniversary edition might bring.

There were some truly smashing films in the international competition and a few highlights were Paul Fegan's Pouters (Scotland), Jean-Bernard Marlin's La Fugue (France), Jenni Toivoniemi's The Date (Finland), Gunhild Enger's A Simpler Life (Sweden), Artykpai Suiundukov's Nomadic (Kyrgyzstan), Adrian Orr's Good Morning Resistance (Spain), Gustav Danielsson's Animals I Killed Last Summer (Sweden), and John Smith's My Dad's Stick (England). Normal life is rubbish, Hamburg über alles!

29-05-13 / DOING REALLY WELL
Another film from the archive, and its online debut. This one fully illustrates the editing fetish I had after the arrival of non-linear desktop systems liberated us from the constraints of old-school machine editing (by comparison, my latest film Stew & Punch, which is almost 17 minutes long, contains only 2 edits). It's all delightfully barmy and watching through the rushes was a real education in terms of the way I used to worked at the time.

25-04-13 / ONE AND A HALF BRAS
Just remastered the short film which became the first third of 10 again in 2002:

25-03-13 / CHARLATAN RENAMES 'SOFT' AND TRIES TO PASS IT OFF AS HIS OWN
Amongst you are directors, producers, film festival programmers, commissioners and musicians, all of whom i'd like to make aware of a Jean Philippe Farber, who has uploaded a film of mine onto youtube and changed the credits to claim it as his own.  while his effort is more amusing than anything else, the sheer audacity is shocking - in the end credits he has re-spelled everyone's names, including myself as 'Simon Temple' for editing, himself for writing and directing, and claiming copyright between himself and the BBC.

I happen to know from an aquaintance who dealt with JPB in the past that he is an actual practioner of film in the UK, so this isn't some teenage YouTube prank. He also has a website under his name. It will obviously be no trouble getting the upload removed, and it may already be gone by the time you read this, but it's important that as many people see this as possible in order to expose JPB's duplicity and prevent him from potentially taking an honest filmmaker's rightful slot in a festival programme with a film that might not be his his own, or be commissioned with a script that is stolen intellectual property (for example). I would never seriously consider such ludicrous hypotheses were this theft not so brazen, and I would like to prevent anyone else's time being wasted by JPB, whether it be thoughts of collaboration based on unconfirmed experience or simply time wasted having to blow the whistle in a case like this. After all, once his upload is removed people won't know he ever did it. Honestly, this world...

UPDATE 1: The internet is a wonderful thing and feedback has been amazing. The plot has thickened somewhat and while some things wouldn't be appropriate to post online (oh the irony) it transpires that JPF has done the same thing with a US short by Dan Trachtenberg, re-editing as well as re-titling it. For anyone interested, and before they are removed, the original film is here and the buggered version here.

UPDATE 2: JPF realised something was happening and removed two separate links to my film personally, before Channel 4 enforced the removal of his 'showreel', which also featured three minutes of my work and parts of other people's films. The trigger pulled, I finally sent him an email and, surprise surprise, two of his other short films have magically vanished.

20-03-13 / JURY IN THE NETHERLANDS / APOCALYPSE
Time flew during jury duties at GoShort festival in Nijmegen and it was really too much of a blur to report anything other than some favourite films, including Anna Frances Ewert's Endless Day (Germany), Oliver Schwarz's Dream Girl (Germany), Jan van Ijken's Facing Animals (Netherlands) and Sam de Jong's Magnesium (Netherlands). There were sadly many special programmes that clashed with work and therefore had to be missed, although it was an utter pleasure to see the Laurel & Hardy short Big Business by James W Horne (1929) on the big screen (they don't make them like they used to, etc etc).

I also found about, and was given, a book that was published in 2010 containing short stories by writers based on the synopses of several short films, Soft being one of them. The book was accompanied by a DVD of the films. I didn't ever hear about this.

On a slight tangent, here's an amusing short from this year's Sundance:

15-02-13 / 'STEW & PUNCH' PRESS SCREENING / UTOPIA
It's been a mad month or so. A couple of weeks in Hamburg trying to write, then home, then back to Germany for a few days at Berlin Film Festival, then finally the rather glitzy press launch of six short films made for the Collabor8te scheme, including my own Stew & Punch.

Berlin was pretty much a blur. I almost missed my flight going out and coming back, flying direct to London for the Collabor8te press launch in my festival scruffs. It turned out to be a champagne-and-celebrities affair at the Old Lumiere Cinema on Regent Street, which I utterly failed to adapt to after rough and ready Berlin. Stew & Punch was the final film in the programme and was thankfully well received, picking up a rather nice review here (you'll need to scroll down a bit).  

Finally, while I was away Channel 4 launched Utopia, starring the exceptional young Oliver Woollford who debuted in my last short Jam Today - whooop, go Oliver!

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