Forest Row Film Society

Part of the Forest Row Festival, this small online film festival will give you something else to do when you’re not going to one of the other events. However, the whole point of the Forest Row Festival is to get everyone out in the village, and not to be stuck home watching stuff on your computer.

There are two strands to the film festival:

1. The festival in film: short films about last year’s festival;
2. International short films

We also want this to encourage you to bring along your camcorder and film a bit of the festival yourself; we can then include more films here next year about the festival or Forest Row more generally. We may even screen them in the village hall.

The festival in film

Last year several short films were produced of aspects of the festival. They give a good flavour of the event, and suggest what you might expect this year.

Forest Row Cycle Saturday

Barry Durdant-Hollamby’s film focuses on the annual bike ride, which has been organised by Suzanne Hillen for the last eight years. The prizes last year were awarded by our MP Charles Hendry. This year it will be Rodabe Rudin, the Forest Row parish clerk, who will be awarding them.

Up on the Roof

Simon Wells and the Jam Band were filmed on the roof of the Swan by Geoff Weate performing lots of Beatles numbers and much else. This is part one of a series.

Byrd in the Phone Box

When William Byrd wrote his mass in 1595 the Catholic Latin mass was illegal in England. Masses were performed in secret, often in basements or other private spaces. The itinerant version that took place in Forest Row on 7 October 2007 started off in a basement and ended up in the Swan. Photo and film by Mike Grenville.

International short films

Delivery

An old man receives a package which has remarkable power.

Made by German film-maker Till Nowak, it was short listed for the European Film Awards in 2006. Read more and see an interview with the director.

Mary’s Date

Directed by Jan Dunn, whose amazing feature Ruby Blue we saw at the recent BFFS awards, this is a delightful short comedy featuring Pauline McLynn (Mrs Doyle from Father Ted).

Kiwi

Made by Dony Permedi as his MA thesis at New York, this short animation is a rather sad, poignant tale of a flightless bird.

As part of this year’s Forest Row Festival, Forest Row Film Society will include an online film festival with its regular screenings.

Combining some short films of previous Forest Row Festivals with award-winning international short films, the online film festival is an exciting new initiative for the film society.

“The main objective of the Forest Row Festival is to get the whole community out into the village, but we also wanted to use the films made of previous festivals to encourage people to come. It was an easy step to add other films and make it even more of an event,” commented Brad Scott, who is involved with both the film society and the festival.

Brad also laid down a challenge: “if people make short films of the festival this year, we will have a ready-made forum for showing them next year, so get your camcorders out and let us see your take on the festival.”

During the festival, a great Russian version of Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya will also be screened in the village hall on 3rd October.

The online film festival will run from Saturday 27th September at http://forestrowfilmsociety.org/festival08.

Forest Row Film Society is delighted to announce that we have been shortlisted for this year’s Film Society of the Year awards, organised by the British Federation of Film Societies. The awards dinner will be held in Sheffield on Saturday 27th September.