Kino is back and ready to confirm its place as the UK’s premiere short film festival.
Between February 21st and 27th, it will be returning for the ninth year with revitalised old favourites, such as the eminent Kino Latino, BlueFiRe!, Made Up North, Animation, Inspired By The Medium, Student and Going Underground programmes. It will be introducing exciting new themed sections, such as Neurotic Tales, Weird Tales and Kino Extreme.
The festival promises a championing of local and emerging filmmaking talent, blended with a celebration of the recognition that short film has recently received in the wider industry.
FESTIVAL PROGRAMME
International Panorama: Kino’s selection of international shorts includes cross-national collections (International Shorts - two programmes - and International Student), as well as nation specific line ups, presented in association with the key international culture centres in Manchester (Kino Latino - two programmes - French Shorts - two programmes - and German Shorts).
British New Wave: the domestic shorts programmes combine a celebration of the finest UK shorts produced in the last 18 months (Best Of British - two programmes - and UK Student), with the best locally produced work from emerging and established talent in an expanded Made Up North programme. This year a whole day of screenings and professional events will be devoted to the local industry.
BlueFiRe!: Kino’s dedicated Black And Asian shorts programmes will be arranged to allow a comparison between the best British shorts (BlueFiRe! British) and the most impressive talent from the rest of the world (BlueFiRe! International)
Animation: two animated shorts programmes will showcase the most notable and innovative work from UK and international directors (International Animation and UK Animation).
Documentary: as cinema audiences for documentary films reach an all time high, Kino presents the most challenging new documentary shorts from around the world
Inspired By The Medium: Kino has a long standing tradition of supporting new filmmaking media. As digital technology revolutionises the industry, Kino offers a platform to the best and bravest of those revolutionaries.
Going Underground: camp, controversial, sexy and political, this represents Kino’s usual brand of quirky, off-the-wall, provocative and cutting edge new work from low budget filmmakers across the world, who all share a defiantly “underground” sensibility.
Themed programmes: as a result of the success of the acclaimed Kino Horror, this year’s festival has been expanded to add a new, darker dimension to the festival and compliment the traditional shorts programmes. Kino will again explore the sinister side of short film (Kino Horror) and truly test the retinal resilience of the audience (Kino Extreme).
Psychological themes of anxiety and alienation will be explored in Neurotic Tales. Strangeness and surrealism are the order of the day in the aptly named Bizarre Tales, while Bad Sex offers a down and dirty antidote to frictionless soft focus erotica.
SPECIAL RECOMMENDAITIONS
The entire history of cinema - every plot Hollywood ever dreamed of and every star you’ve ever loved - in Virgil Widrich’s jaw-dropping, multi-award-winning masterpiece Fast Film.
The German shorts programme, featuring Neele Vollmar’s award-winning generation gap comedy, Meine Eltern (My Parents), and the UK premiere of Tonia-Babette Budelmann’s critically acclaimed Die Geschichte vom Roten Keramikpferd (Story of A Red Ceramic Horse).
Top French shorts, including premieres of the strange and poignant La Collection de Judicael, the disturbing Cut In The Editing Room, horror comedy The Gravedigger’s Striptease, Calicot, The Most Of My Worries and Au Bar des Amis.
American film legend Harvey Keitel in the charmingly offbeat Chasing The Elephant.
Spanish film fans can look forward to Fele Martinez (Bad Education, Abre Les Ojos), as Lewis Carroll in Alice Portraited, and cult film legend Eusebio Poncella (Law Of Desire, Intacto) in the poignant La Agonia.
The easily shocked should probably stay away, but those with strong stomachs should make a date to see Dennison Ramalho’s controversial horror shocker Amor so de Mae (Love From Mother Only), which has had people fainting in the aisles at film festivals all around the world. Be warned: The script was written by a convicted Satanic priest and all the rites and rituals are totally authentic.
OTHER EVENTS
To compliment the screenings, Kino is planning a European Film Conference, centring on two of the foremost issues currently affecting the Short Film Industry: Co-Production And Distribution Between European Member States and Making The Transition From Shorts To Features. The aim of these sessions will be to bring together European festival directors with film producers, directors and distributors to discuss these and other issues and to arrive at a series of recommendations and suggested actions for the industry that will then be presented through the European Co-ordination of Film Festivals.
