Oska Bright Film Festival - Interview with Sarah Watson

Oska Bright is a film festival in Brighton that promotes films made by people with learning disabilities.  It has been going for nearly a decade and is the only festival of it's type.  I love the idea and can't wait to see the films so I got in touch and asked a few questions.

This is the response I got from Sarah Watson (OB committee member and Carousel chair)

• What is the mission statement of the festival in your own words?

Oska Bright is a film festival managed by people with a learning disability, showing films to anyone and everyone. Oska Bright is a festival, spread the love about Oska Bright, all you need is love! We want to spread great films made by people with a learning disability. We celebrate learning disability culture, we promote it and make sure people take it seriously as good quality art work. We work hard to connect with people who have learning disabilities and give them the chance to show their films.

• What was the genesis of Carousel?

Carousel is an award winning learning disability led arts organisation. Founded in 1982 Carousel works to promote the active involvement of people with a learning disability in the arts, teaching new artistic skills and developing existing talents. In 2000, Junk TV www.junk-tv.com, a youth and community film production company, and Carousel www.carousel.org.uk, a learning disabled arts charity began working together to support learning disabled people to make their own films. The films that were made were animated films and were very colourful and fun to watch.

By 2003 quite a few films had been made but it was very difficult to find any cinemas or film festivals to show the films to people. After speaking to Screen South, Arts Council England and a number of local production companies, Carousel and Junk TV decided to organise a small scale event to show the new films.They supported a group of learning disabled artists and film makers to set up the Oska Bright Festival steering committee – that’s us!