Birds Eye View Film Festival March 8 -17 2011
The Festival returns for its seventh annual celebration of women filmmakers from 8-17 March at BFI Southbank, the ICA the Southbank Centre, with over 40 events and screenings including an unprecedented seven international feature debuts (fiction and documentary) by women, plus seven specially commissioned new live scores for silent classics.
Programme includes:
- •Features inc Golden Globe winner In A Better World
•BFI Southbank
•Documentaries inc Lucy Walker’s Countdown to Zero
•The ICA
•Sound & Silents musicians inc. Imogen Heap, Micachu
•Southbank Centre
•Bloody Women: from Gothic to Horror themed strand
•Prince Charles Cinema
•Fashion Loves Film with Linder Sterling, Julie Verhoeven
•Electric Cinema, Notting Hill
•Music Loves Video with Kate Nash & Miranda Sawyer
•Rio Cinema, Dalston
•Short films, inc. Oscar contenders & BAFTA winners
•Shortwave, Bermondsey
•Filmmaker Focus: Margarethe von Trotta
•Opening & Closing Night Galas + Festival Awards
•Parties & VIPs, inc. Rosamund Pike & Joely Richardson
•Innovation, training & workshops
•BFI retrospective: A Woman’s Gotta Do…
BEV 2011 highlights
The Birds Eye View Film Festival 2011 (BEV) opens on 8 March, the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, with an Opening Night Gala showcase of short films by the world’s most exciting emerging women filmmakers, including award-winners and Oscar-shortlists, as well a live score by pop innovator Micachu to an early silent animation by Lotte Reiniger; and followed by an exclusive BEV Party at BFI Southbank.
Festival programme highlights include the London premiere of Susanne Bier’s Golden Globe winning and Oscar nominated In A Better World and Kelly Reichardt’s Meek’s Cutoff starring Oscar nominee Michelle Williams (+ Q&A with actress Shirley Henderson); documentaries including Oscar nominated Lucy Walker’s Sundance hit Countdown to Zero and Turner Prizewinner Gillian Wearing’s feature debut Self Made; UK Shorts introduced by actress Natalie Press including Marianne Elliott’s film debut Alice starring Maxine Peake, and International Shorts including Oscar-shortlisted Little Children, Big Words.
Slashing through the BEV programme is Bloody Women: From Gothic to Horror,a vital rediscovery of women’s contribution to horror from gothic psychodrama to vampire chic. Highlights include Kathryn Bigelow’s seminal vampire flick Near Dark; new shorts by film’s bloodiest women programmed in association with Film4 FrightFest; a panel debate featuring journalist & broadcaster Muriel Gray; and a partnership with the Horror Channel that sees the station dedicate a week of programming to films created by or featuring horror’s most powerful women.
BEV’s renowned silent film / live music commissions Sound & Silents also follow this year’s Bloody Women theme. Highlights include Grammy Award winner Imogen Heap’s score to Germaine Dulac’s The Seashell and the Clergyman (1928); Aristazabal Hawkes of Mercury and BRIT award-winners Guillemots performing live to Sparrows (1928), starring Mary Pickford; and Blue Roses, Micachu, Seaming To, Tara Busch and Lola Perrin performing to films by pioneering filmmakers such as Lotte Reiniger and Lois Weber at events across BFI Southbank and the Southbank Centre.
For the Closing Night Gala on 17 March BEV presents the London Premiere of Lena Dunham’s SXSW-winning quarterlife crisis comedy Tiny Furniture, followed by the coveted Festival Awards whose jury members and presenters include Joely Richardson, Emma Freud and Kerry Fox. Elsewhere, the Festival Party at the ICA will be co-hosted by Little White Lies with live acts including Wendy Bevan’s latest incarnation Temper Temper.
Festival favourite Fashion Loves Film returns with work by designers, fine artists and photographers exploring the crossover between fashion, art and advertising, featuring work by Linder Sterling and Julie Verhoeven and films starring Tilda Swinton and Kristin Scott-Thomas. The ultimate cinematic mix-tape Music Loves Video is also back with a smash-hit selection of the best filmmakers with rhythm, introduced by BRIT Award winner Kate Nash with a directors’ Q&A chaired by Miranda Sawyer.
Running in tandem with BEV 2011 is BFI Southbank’s retrospective A Woman’s Gotta Do… Highlights include Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs, Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, and Lillian Gish in The Night of the Hunter.
BEV 2011 Programme Details and Links at http://www.birds-eye-view.co.uk/3143/overview/birds-eye-view-film-festival-2011.html
