East End Review

Tag: Hayley Barton-Stamp

  • UK Film Festival returns to Aubin Cinema

    Buzkashi Boys: one of the star films of last year's festival
    Buzkashi Boys: one of the star films of last year’s festival

    Independent  filmmakers from around the world will have the chance to showcase their work at the UK Film Festival, which returns this month to the Aubin Cinema in Shoreditch.

    The festival, now in its third year, provides unsung talent as well as more established independent  filmmakers a platform to have their work screened to a wider audience. Last year’s big discovery Buzkashi Boys, directed by Sam French, went on to achieve an Oscar nomination, and the festival was also instrumental in broadcasting another winner Why Don’t We Do It In The Road on Channel 4.

    Filmmakers Murray Woodfield and Mahdi Hussein Nejad set up the festival in 2011 as an alternative to major festivals which they believed no longer served those ‘unheard voices’ in  film.

    “All major festivals will tell you that they’re looking for the next big talent but they become mainstream and so sought after that new voices don’t get much of a look in,” says Woodfield.

    By the festival’s second year they found they were receiving a lot of submissions from established filmmakers, leading them to change
    their policy.

    “We decided that half of our films would be from quite well established people and other the half from that very new emerging talent. It is not very difficult because there are so many extremely talented new  filmmakers out there making it easy to  find amazing material done by people that no one – even in the film industry – has heard of.”
    
    This year the festival has brought in the acclaimed director Petros Silvestros to help choose the  films, a move that Woodfield claims has raised the level of professionalism.

    He says: “ The  films in the first year were good, the  lms we had in the second year were excellent – but these ones are exceptional and I’m not just bandying these words around.”

    Three features already on the programme are the Italian drama Miele (Honey) by Valeria Golin, romantic melodrama  The Broken Circle Breakdown directed by Felix Van Groeningen and Clio Barnard’s  The Selfish Giant based on the Oscar Wilde story of the same name.

    Festivals like Raindance already claim to be celebrating the best of independent  film, but Woodfield is confident that the UK Film Festival offers something different.

    “We’re newer, we’re younger in terms of what we look for and although I’ve got great respect for Raindance we’re not doing quite the same as them – we’re taking a younger look.”

    The UK Film Festival is at the Aubin Cinema, 64-66 Redchurch St, E2 7DP from 11-15 November

  • Shoreditch artist John Dolan’s unusual success story

     

    Mr Dolan drawing on a Shoreditch Street with his dog George
    Mr Dolan drawing on a Shoreditch Street. Photograph: Rob Weir

    So, you think Shoreditch has started losing its edge, having been drowned out over the past couple of years by middle class trendies driving the eccentric and eclectic mix of art, fashion and location lifestyle into corporate regeneration?

    Well, not necessarily. For an example of the older Shoreditch look no further than the area’s most notorious street artist.

    Former jailbird John Dolan’s debut exhibition took place last month at Howard Griffin Gallery in Shoreditch.

    Dolan, 42, has led what he describes as a “rough life” – he has spent time on the streets and has been in and out of HMP Pentonville over the years.

    After he rediscovered a long neglected gift as an artist he began creating a series of finely drawn, detailed monochrome cityscapes that he then posted to famous street artists around the world who added their own splashes of colour to the drawings.

    Before the doors to Dolan’s exhibition opened to a mass of fellow artists and collaborators, local film directors and industry peers, I chatted to John about what landed him in jail and his ambitions for the future.

    When did you first start getting recognised?

    About two months after sitting down in the street I got published in Shoreditch Unbound, which was around September 2012.

    How did you end up in prison?

    I used to suffer from depression, years ago. I was looking after my granddad for about seven years and I started to break into sandwich shops, bars, and offices. I knew the places that kept money in them at weekends, so I’d steal cash so I could go on shopping sprees in the West End. Bit of retail therapy to cheer myself up, that was it, basically.

    What are your future ambitions?

    To have a show in New York.

    Do you think living on the street has shaped you in a positive way?

    Any hardship in life makes you a better person and make you respect yourself.