Screentest

After a great event in 2008, the National Student Film Festival is already looking ahead to 2009! There have been several significant changes to our infrastructure here in Bristol, so we’re more excited than ever about our chances– next year’s event looks set to be the best yet.

All this festival goodness doesn’t just happen by itself however… behind each talk, screening, workshop or party is a dedicated team working tirelessly for weeks, sometimes months. Think you’ve got what it takes to get involved?

Screentest has a number of management positions currently up for grabs:

Sponsorship Manager

Running a film festival is an expensive project, and Screentest is funded almost entirely by sponsorship and partnerships with businesses and organisations. Connecting Screentest to potential sponsors and brokering deals is one of the most important roles on the committee and would be a fantastic opportunity for anyone interested in a career in media to develop contacts within the industry.

National Network Manager

Screentest is far more than a Bristol-based event, and each year students from dozens of universities get involved by submitting their films and making the trip to Bristol to attend the festival itself. We need someone to take an active role in connecting Screentest to this sprawling network of societies and courses as well as laying the groundwork for screenings and talks around the country.

Regional Network Manager (South West)

As the National Student Film Festival you might expect Screentest to receive plenty of attention from the students and residents of Bristol. Sadly this doesn’t happen by itself– we need an outgoing and well-connected individual to get the word out, promoting the festival to Bristol and the surrounding area and arranging pre-event parties. (This role doubles as our social secretary.)

You can apply to any of the positions by emailing volunteer@screentestfest.org.uk — we’ll get back to you with interview details as soon as we can. We have also set up a recruitment group on facebook, so feel free to check us out there as well.

Note: the positions currently available are all Bristol-based, so you’ll need to be a full or part time student located in Bristol (but not necessarily at Bristol University) to apply. Keep your eyes open though– we have plans to expand our national network this year so there may well be jobs up for grabs near you in the coming months.

As always, thank you all for your commitment to student film, and we look forward to seeing you all again before too long!

[Post missing.]

Screentest is pleased to announce the provisional screening schedule for our 2008 event.

We tried to squeeze as many films in as we could but the competition this year was incredibly strong - commiserations if your film didn’t make it. We appreciate all your efforts and the festival this year is better than ever thanks to the many entries we received from across the country.

We hope that this is the final schedule but in very extreme cases times and if we absolutely can’t avoid it film selection may change (although we’ll do everything we can to not go down that route!) The order of films within a screening has yet to be decided and the list below is in alphabetical order for each screening.

The Screenings for Screentest 2008 are as follows:

BAFTA screening (17:00-20:00, Friday 29th February)
A selection of the award winning shorts from this year’s Bafta awards including a screening and Q and A with Short Animation winner Luis Cook

Drama screening (20:00-22:00, Friday 29th February)
Belle and the Blind (Ed Wilkes, Southampton)
Billy Wright (Ed Lilly, Farnham)
Jump (James Nunn, Westminster)
Long Walk Home (Chris Nunn, London South Bank)
Made Up Love Story (no 23) (Jack Whitely, Manchester Metropolitan)
Modern Times (Craig Martin, Worcester Uni/Kidderminster College)
Osgood’s Circus (Elliot Fu, Westminster)
The Ritz (Dino Dimopoulous/Simon Ryninks, UEA)

Lock-in Showing (22:00-00:00, Friday 29th February)
A Quick Beep (T.Y., Bristol)
Breaking The Silence (Vito Bruno)
Chess Film (Phil Hewitson and Cameron Davey, Cumbria Institute Of The Arts)
Cold Reading (Piers Royce, Southampton)
Dream Project (Haruka Furuya, Bristol)
Emma (Kate Shenton, York)
Ignorance (Liam Pearce, Southampton Solent)
Remember To Rescue Me (Kate Lane, Bournemouth Arts Institute)
The Immaculate Art Of Deleting The Past (Laurence Brook, Glasgow)
The Seamstress (Tony O’Reilly, Leeds Met/Northern Film School)

Comedy (12.30PM , Saturday 1st March)
Anticlockwise (Director Dimitris Bavellas, Northern Film School)
James Had A Problem (Director Dino Dimopoulous, UEA)
My Cereal Friends (Director Stephen Bleakney, Queens Univeristy Belfast)
Nan’s Special Brew (Director Jack Valente, Bucks New University)
Starting Docs: Immigration (Director Michael Shelley/Anthony Bell, Edge Hill)
Submarine (Director Adam Butcher, Bristol)
The Device (Director Alec Milne, Bristol)
The Doorstep Deed (Director Zak Klein, UEA)
The Visitors (Director Tom Savage, Bristol)
The Wardens (Director Chris Nunn, London South Bank)

Documentary (17.30-19.00 , Saturday 1st March)
Blood, Tar and Honour (Director Jonas Molina, Farnham)
Busker (Director George Clipp, Manchester)
Buy Nothing Day Bristol (Bristol Drama department)
Cinema, Where’s The Romance? (Director Craig Martin, Worcester Uni/Kidderminster College)
Not So Sunny By The Sea (Director Dom Maker, London South Bank)
Shenzen - Transformation In Modern China (Director Tianqi Yu, Westminster)
Sunaina (Director Namrata Goyal, Queen Mary College, London)
The World’s Biggest Experiment (BlueSci Team, Cambridge)

Music Video/Animation/Additional Films (10:00AM , Saturday 1st March)
Dreams By The Clyde (Darren EggenSchwiler, Glasgow)
Eyesaw (Syd Harvey, London South Bank
Greener Grass (Rob Harrison, Lincoln)
I Am Ahab (Max Alexander, Bristol UWE)
Phil And Shaun - Filmmakers (Greg Pittard, Kent)
Routine (David Casson, University College for the Creative Arts, Maidstone)
Superhero (Nick Cork, Bristol)
Motion (Robin Whenery, Exeter)
The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter (Paul Phillip Green, Bristol)
World On Fire (Piers Royce, Southampton)

There will also be repeats of most of the screenings on Sunday 2nd March for those who miss them during the rest of the weekend. We have a number of excellent workshops on filmmaking all day Saturday which we highly recommend - for this reason all Saturday showings will be repeated at least once on the Sunday.

The Award show is at 7PM on the Saturday and will be followed by a party with live music, DJs and drinks promos. The ‘Best Of’ Screening with the award-winning films willn be shown on Sunday and possibly late Saturday night.

Thanks for all your submissions and we hope to see you at Screentest 2008!

We’ve had an amazing amount of great quality student-made films this year and in the ten days or so since the deadline we’ve been watching them around the clock to decide on nominees for our awards and choices for screenings at the festival.
Now however, I can reveal the final list of nominees for our award ceremony. Congratulations to all those picked and commiserations to those who missed out - this was our strongest ever year and we had hard decisions to make in a lot of the categories. In the end length of entries meant we had to cut a number of films, although a few had to be left out for copyright reasons - if it’s not clear you own the rights to use a piece of music (i.e. it is clearly acknowledged in the credits) we unfortunately cannot use your film.

Here are the nominees for all the awards:

The Nominees:

Grand Jury Prize:(judged by a panel of judges including guest speakers at the festival and the editor of Total Film magazine)

Jump (Director James Nunn, Westminster)
The Ritz (Directors Dino Dimopoulos/Simon Ryninks, UEA)
Anticlockwise (Director Dimitris Bavellas, Northern Film School)
The Doorstep Deed (Director Zak Klein, UEA)
Osgood’s Circus (Director Elliot Fu, Westminster)
Shenzen - Transformation in Modern China (Director Tianqi Yu, Westminster)

Comedy:(judged by University of Bristol Film-making society)
Anticlockwise (Director Dimitris Bavellas, Northern Film School)
Starting Docs: Immigration (Director Michael Shelley, Edge Hill)
The Doorstep Deed (Director Zak Klein, UEA)
The Visitors (Director Tom Savage, Bristol)
The Wardens (Director Chris Nunn, London South Bank)

Documentary:
Blood Tar and Honour (Director Jonas Molina, Farnham)
Shenzen - Transformation in Modern China (Director Tianqi Yu, Westminster)
Sunaina (Director Namrata Goyal, Queen Mary College London)
The World’s Biggest Experiment (BlueSci Team, Cambridge)

Drama:(judged by Bristol Fine Film Society)

Billy Wright (Director Ed Lilly, Salford)
Jump (Director James Nunn, Westminster)
The Ritz (Directors Dino Dimopoulos/Simon Ryninks, UEA)
Osgood’s Circus (Director Elliot Fu, Westminster)

Action/Horror:

Long Walk Home (Director Chris Nunn, London South Bank)
Cold Reading (Director Piers Royce, Southampton)
Breaking The Silence (Director Vito Bruno)
Remember To Rescue Me (Director Kate Lane, Bournemouth Arts Institute)

Animation:
Eyesaw (director Syd Harvey, London South Bank)
I Am Ahab (director Max Alexander, Bristol UWE)
Routine (Director David Casson, University College for the creative arts, maidstone)

Music Video:
World on Fire (Director Piers Royce, Southampton)
I Am Ahab (Director Max Alexander, Bristol UWE)

Technical Achievement:
Ignorance (Director Liam Pearce, Southampton Solent)
The World’s Biggest Experiment (BlueSci Team, Cambridge)
Jump (Director James Nunn, Westminster)
Osgood’s Circus (Director Elliot Fu, Westminster)

Script:
The Ritz(Writers Dino Dimopolous/Simon Ryninks)
The Wardens (improvisation by actors and director Chris Nunn, London South Bank)
The World’s Biggest Experiment (BlueSci Team, Cambridge)
Starting Docs - Immigration (Michael Shelley and Anthony Bell, Edge Hill)
The Doorstep Deed (Zak Klein, UEA)

Congratulations again to all the nominees. The festival kicks off at 4PM on Friday 29th February with the Awards show at 7PM on Saturday 1st March, we hope to see you all there.

Many thanks for all your entries, we couldn’t do it without you.

Tomas Martin,
Screentest 2008 coordinator

Well we’re now closed to submissions for 2008, thanks for all your great films.

We ended up with a similar number of submissions to last year, in a broad range of styles and genres. We’re hard at work reviewing the entries now and the quality this year seems to be excellent, with some extremely high quality films we’ve enjoyed very much.

We should have contacted everyone who submitted a film to confirm its receipt but if you haven’t heard please email me on info@screentestfest.org.uk to confirm we haven’t lost it somewhere.

I’m hoping we should have finished watching the films shortly and we will be sending out details of whether your film will be shown at the weekend and whether you’ve been nominated for any awards by the end of next week, with any luck. Then in two weeks it’ll be Screentest time - we hope to see you there!

Tomas Martin,

coordinator, Screentest 2008 (distribution)