Short Summary
My name is Alexzandra Jackson and I'm the painfully shy festival curator of The Short Cinema Film Festival in Leicester, United Kingdom.
The Short Cinema is an annual short film festival held at Phoenix Cinema, showcasing established and emerging talent from across the East Midlands. Offering an exciting mix of films irrespective of genre, style or budget, The Short Cinema provides local writers, producers and directors with the opportunity to exhibit their work on the big screen to a discerning audience of film lovers.
The festival also provides film-makers with an opportunity to meet and discuss their work with their peers, strengthening bonds with the East Midlands film-making community.
Thanks to our founders Karen Foster and Steve Naish, over the last eight years The Short Cinema has grown from a small grass roots screening to a much bigger (still grass roots) festival. Its aim is to continue this growth, exploring and providing new opportunities for anyone involved in East Midlands film to develop and exhibit their work, both in the region and around the world.
This year the competition has been fiercer than ever, with over 1400 submissions. We feel it's our responsibility to produce an event that honours all film-makers screening and not for their contribution.
What We Are Raising Money For
- It's a necessity to create DCPs (Digital Content Packages) so we can display the films at the highest possible quality.
- We want to document the event and pay for the time, skill and effort given by photographers and documentary makers to do so.
- We need to print our brochure, which allows audiences to take home a memento of the evening and reference material for future networking.
- Most of all we want to create the kind of event that film-makers are proud to be a part of where they feel their art is truly being respected.
If we don't reach our goal we'll put whatever money we have raised into the priority that impacts on the most amount of people first and work our way down to balloons.
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The Impact
At the heart of everything we do is enabeling people to see their films on the big screen and in some small way help build the belief in local talent:
- The East Midlands is a hive of creativity with massive potential to play a role in our country's digital and creative landscape on an international level.
- This is our 8th year and each year we try to build on the success of the last, adding new opportunities for not only film-makers but film-lovers and those in the wider industry.
Risks & Challenges
There isn't a simple qualification for running film festivals (cue being told there is) so most of it is using our 8 years of experience and our instincts to try and make the right decisions.
Sometimes things go wrong but if they do there isn't anything in the world that could stop us from trying to make sure that never happens again.
We're currently a very small team with no external funding and I've completely forgotten what made me think it was a good idea to get involved 4 years ago other than, well, I couldn't not and I wouldn't have it any other way. Apart from the bigger team and funding which would be lovely.
Other Ways You Can Help
- All and any help is so gratefully received and that's really not just money; tweeting, posting on Facebook, writing up the events or the films in your blog are all truly valuable.
- If we were being really cheeky (and we're asking you to give up your hard earned cash already) we'd absolutely love some cool idents or some strange artwork for the festival, things our own brains are too tired from processing the submission to come up with.
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