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!

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!

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

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)

By using PayPal to process your order electronically Screentest is now able to sell weekend tickets to the fourth National Student Film Festival right here on our website. Simply follow the link in the menu (or click here) to place your order. Tickets will be reserved for you (and any friends you buy tickets for) at the ‘Reserved Tickets’ stall at the festival, which opens at 5pm on Friday 29th February. You will need some form of identification to collect your tickets– a student card will do just fine.

Unfortunately this year Screentest are unable to offer accommodation to visiting festival-goers, but we have compiled a list of local hostels on the ticket page. Don’t forget you can give us a shout if you get stuck.

We look forward to welcoming you to Screentest 2008!

We’re up to 47 entries for this year’s festival, which we’re rapidly converting to avi on our shiny new Screentest computer in order for us to make the festival showreels. We are grateful to Leopard Films and the University of Bristol Fine Film Society for their recent donations and are working hard on new idents, plans for the award, flyers and posters and a final schedule for the weekend which should be online soon. The page for tickets should be up within 48 hours.

The films we’ve seen so far this year have been impressive and we look forward to watching them all over the next few weeks.

Tomas Martin, coordinator

We have a great weekend lined up for you starting on Thursday 28th February where the Watershed cinema will be hosting a screening of the best of last year’s films. On the friday we will start around five, screen some previously unseen Bafta winning shorts, as well as talks, screenings and the inevitable late night Lock-In session. On saturday we will have workshops on filmmaking throughout the day as well as screening your films, with the Award Ceremony around 8. After the awards there will be a chance to see the Best Of the Fest 2008, followed by a party! On Sunday we will recap a lot of our screenings for those that missed them the first time round.

Details of tickets and accomodation should be online soon. If you just missed the original 31st January deadline, you can still submit your film if you’re quick! See you at the end of the month!

Tomas Martin

Screentest 2008 coordinator

We’re still on track for the festival on the 29th February to the 2nd March. We are still open to submissions of student films until the 31st of January but we’ve had a number of you ask how flexible that date is. If you’re still in post-production and want to submit, we urge you to submit your film postmarked before the deadline. We will try to show any films submitted after that date but they may not be entered into any or all of the Award categories.

We should have details about tickets and accomodation by the end of the month. Weekend passes should be about £10.

Thanks and keep in touch!

Tomas Martin

Screentest 2008 coordinator

We’ve received the first couple of films, which is exciting! Entries have come in from Kent, Bournemouth and Warwick. We hope to see a lot more from all you filmmakers out there.

We’re starting to firm up ideas for  the schedule of the festival weekend. Last year we showed a number of BAFTA-winning short animations and drama. This year we have the same opportunity. To increase the success of this exciting part of the festival, we’re moving the BAFTA showing from Sunday to Friday. Friday looks to be an exciting day with speeches from UK Film Council Executive Director John Woodward as well as Animator Luis Cook from Aardman and the ever popular Lock-in session late at night. On saturday in the daytime we’re aiming to have a number of filmmaking workshops and talks aimed towards the filmmaking process. Whereas Friday and Saturday night talks are aimed more at the general viewer and festival attendee, the Saturday morning workshops are really aimed at those making films and submitting them to us at the festival. Those who submit films and/or get nominated for awards may get concessions to the workshops, so submit those films now!

We’re working hard to create a great festival to match the entries we’re already starting to see. Here’s to March!

*legal stuff: all schedules and plans subject to change*