Submissions open for Wotever DIY Film Festival 2015!

This year, Crispy Sharp is going to be working a lot to promote the Wotever DIY Film Festival – a three-day festival that celebrates independent and lo-fi queer filmmaking held primarily at the Cinema Museum in London.  There will be a handful of feature films, a much larger amount of shorts, discussions & debates and workshops – and lots of booze and giggles.

The submission window is now open for this year’s event, with the deadline being the 31^st May.  Below is a description in their own words about what they are looking for:

“We are looking for short films up to 30 minutes on a queer theme. However, we will prioritise films 15 minutes and under. Feature length films will be considered although please be aware we have very limited space for these. All films need to be DIY or independent films of any genre on a queer theme. We have a particular interest in films about queer people and queer culture reclaiming space. Other than that, our only criteria is that they must be in keeping with our Wotever ethos and as such we will not consider submissions that are racist, misogynist, transphobic, homophobic, ableist, sizeist, feature religious intolerance or are in any way prejudiced or exclusionary towards a particular group or identity. We are always trying to improve accessibility at Wotever DIY Film Festival and with that we assert that all filmmakers selected for the festival must work to commit to subtitling their films. 

We welcome films that push the boundaries of queer thinking and ideology, are thought-provoking and progressive. Saying that, we also appreciate a nice queer-meets-queer love story, slap stick comedy or music video we can dance to."

All submissions must use the official submission form and be available for download or streaming to be viewed by the programming team.  For more information and to get access to the form or to ask a question please contact Theresa & Tara at woteverfilm@gmail.com (so far I’ve met half of them; they’re super lovely…)

There is more information on last year’s event at the links below as well as upcoming news.  I will also definitely have them as a guest on the Crispy Sharp Podcast in the coming weeks to explain more...

http://woteverfilmfest.co.uk

@WoteverFilmFest 

https://facebook.com/WoteverFilmFestival

Film Review: Hinterland (2015)

When you’re younger, the relationships you have feel like they’re going to last forever.  Your first proper boyfriend/girlfriend feels like your soul mate and your BFFs seem like they will be with you for life.  And when you inevitably drift apart from someone that you used to love, can you ever reunite and recapture what made you so close in the first place?  This profound question is the heart of writer/director Harry McQueen’s debut film Hinterland.

Harvey (McQueen) and Lola (Lori Campbell), two young Londoners who have been friends forever, decided to reunite after her long spell travelling the world to go for a weekend away in his parent’s house in Cornwall.  That is the entire plot, and it's utterly gripping...

Film Review: Fifty Shades of Grey (2015)

‘Yeah, but it wasn’t as good as the book’ is one of the most common phrases to be heard when discussing literary adaptations with film fans.  So often the argument goes that the nature of prose allows for a richer and more three-dimensional understanding of plot, back story or character’s inner monologues and motivations.  But what if a novel has notoriously bad examples of these three things; can it then ever be a good movie?

Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson) is a young virginal English Lit major who has gotten the chance to interview Christian Grey (Jamie Dornan) , a 27-year-old telecommunications billionaire.  During the interview she is intimidated by him and embarrasses herself, so she is all the more surprised when he begins to pursue her outside of work and they begin dating (kind of…)

It is only after a few dates does she realise his obsession with having ‘control over all things’ and has a literal manifestation in a private playroom in his apartment full of…toys.

Film Review: The Interview (2015)

When Seth Rogen’s new geopolitical comedy The Interview was nearing its theatrical release in America, the distributors Sony made international news by seemingly bowing to supposed threats made from North Korea and pulled the movie.  This drastic reaction was widely derided and quickly reversed with a limited run in cinemas on Christmas Day followed by a bigger release and VoD campaign, which in turn garnered enormous global attention from the news media.  Cynics amongst us might conclude that this was just an enormous PR stunt in one of the most postmodern film release strategies ever conceived, or you might agree that the provocative narrative really was worthy of international tensions and threats of violence…

Dave Skylark (James Franco) is a narcissistic, vain and imbecilic TV talk show host who has a talent for interviewing a-list celebrities and making them reveal their secrets and hidden talents.  His hit show is kept together by his producer and best friend Aaron Rapaport (Rogen), who dreams of doing something less trivial and more important with the show and the wide audience that it is has developed.  After an interview with Rob Lowe (about baldness) gets cut short due to a interrupting news update about tensions with North Korea, Skylark discovers that Kim Jong-Un is a fan of his and so tries to appease Rapaport by securing an interview with the dictator.  Much to their amazement, the supreme leader agrees so they celebrate by getting wrecked on super-strength ecstasy.

The next morning they get a visit from the CIA who have a proposition for them to ‘take out’ Kin Jong-Un using a special poison, but when they arrive in Pyongyang Skylark begins to recognize himself in the lonely dictator and starts to doubt the mission…