On 6 Mar 03, I attended a short film evening at Churchill College, University of Cambridge, held by Churchill College MCR Film Society. There were 10 films showing on that evening, all made by university students at Cambridge.

Cambridge is a strange place. It is a large city in the East Anglia region, yet there are no active IAC movie making clubs. Most of the amateur filmmaking activities happen at the two universities. Many of these talented student filmmakers are not even students of drama, film or media studies. They study different subjects and come from a variety of backgrounds.

A majority of these student filmmakers are members of CFTV, a film making club within the University of Cambridge. Simon Knight, the chairman of CFTV, holds weekly meeting at a local pub. Together they consume a lot of alcohol and make a lot of films.

João Lopes Dias

I first met João Lopes Dias at the very first film show at Churchill College back in March 2000. At that time, student filmmaking activities were a lot quieter. An Indian student Manish Tiwary and I, together, showcased 2 hours of materials. João liked them a lot - so much that he teamed up with Pietro Cicuta (a Churchill PhD student who ran the film society), persuaded the College to buy them a computer, joined CFTV to borrow the club camcorder, and made their first film, Hold for Three.

Hold for Three is an adaptation from a short play on friendship by Sherry Kramer. João and Pietco wanted to handle a short and simple script. They set a realistic goal and achieved it with confidence. Hold for Three won the Silver Cigar award for the most original short movie at the Churchill College Film Night in the following year.

João has made three more short films since then. His latest offering to the Churchill College Film Night was a music video, Um Conto Em Macau, filmed in Lisbon and Praia da Adraga. João actually did two videos for his professional singer friend for free in order to help promoting his friend's new album. Since the Portugal pop music market is too small to support decent music video productions, they decided to go independent.

Incidentally, both of João's videos were made in monochrome. “I found video footages lack a film look, but they look much better in black and white.” Instead of taking the colours away from the footages at the post-production stage, João chose to film all the clips in black and white. “We had a much better idea how the films would look like while we were filming.” This is an interesting thought.

João is planning to return to Portugal in the summer after his PhD in Mathematics is completed. His next immediate job is properly not in the film industry. However the future is largely an unknown.

Churchill College Short Movies Night

Now an annual film event under spot light, the Short Movies Night was created by Pietro Cicuta more than 3 years ago. And I remembered the story well too.

Back in 1999, I finished a movie called Crying Origami and was looking for a venue to show it. Churchill College would not let the theatre to me, an ex-member of the College. I wrote to Churchill MCR Film Society and said I needed to show my film badly. Pietro and I looked at the “Term Card” and tried to figure out where we could fit the 35-minute short film into the gap between two showings of a commercial film. It’s not easy. Then Pietro heard about Manish Tiwary who had 2 movies to show incluing the one-hour documentary, Ramnager, on the Indian Ramlila festivities in the ancient city of Benares. We held the film night on a separate evening in the end.

I still remembered that a large number of audiences hang about at the college bar after the show and discussed about the films. I missed this kind of discussion so much. In the following years, the film nights had been formalised into film competitions. People got so tied after a solid 3-hour show and it was too late for a drink afterwards.

This year the Gold Cigar award (for the best short movie) went to Ronger Basha’s Mo Rahman:

“A brother, a sister, an intruder. Amidst the daily routines of the world, and the gradual passing of time, their lives entwine in the languages of love, life and lust.”

Filmed in black and white, Rahman’s offering is a serious attempt on a serious subject. Here is some interesting statistics to demonstrate the varieties: out of the 10 movies shown on that evening, 3 were in black and white, 3 were in foreign languages, 2 were music videos and 2 were animations (one was 16 minutes long!).

(To be continued)

Links

Crying Origami
Strawhide - read about the 16-minutes animation

In the next issue(s)

Simon Knight and CFTV
Cambridge Movies Workshop
Dealing-With-It Workshop

* Screen shots taken from Um Conto Em Macau and Strawhide (animation).

This article only covers a few filmmaking activities happening at East Anglia. If you have a story to tell, please contact the webmaster.

- Atta Chui    Jun 2003

Page updated on 21 March 2008

Authors' views are not necessarily those of The Institute of Amateur Cinematographers

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