10 YEARS OF FASTNET FILMS
Fresh from sending some of our favourite docs and animations to Mecal’s 10th year celebrations in March this year, we’re also impressed to discover that 2018 also marks the 10th year of the delightful Fastnet Film Festival in the lovely environs of Schull, County Cork in Ireland.
We held an enthusiastically received short film screening there last year and we’re very happy to be asked to present a programme of international and Scottish and UK shorts at Fastnet Film Festival 2018. The programme opens on Thursday 24th May and we’re pleased to be screening a broad range of films from the Edinburgh Short Film Festival 2017!
The delightful and intricate Korean stop-frame animation THE REALM OF DEEPEST KNOWING by Seung Hee Kim, originally screened at the Busan International Film Festival, is a deeply symbolic and philosophical animation that explores long term relationships with both insight and fun.
A taut and intense sci-fi thriller from France, JAKOB by Eymeric Jorat, explores the dangers of artificial intelligence gone wrong as a robot faces elimination in a system where morality and ethics have become confused and uncertain.
Our award for Best Film 2017 went to PACO, a unique take on modern, everyday interactions by Catalina Jordan Alvarez and also featuring a standout performance from her brother, Brian Alvarez in the eponymous title role.
Simultaneously sweet and slightly disturbing, uniquely comic, brilliantly played, while directed with panache and vision, Paco engages and repels with equal force.
From Russia, RINGO ROCKET STAR AND HIS SONG FOR YURI GAGARIN chronciles the resolutely bonkers Russian songwriter Ringo and his long-suffering wife as he traverses the Steppes in this dry tragic musical as he aims for fame by writing a song about the first man in the space Yuri Gagarin. Very funny and impossible to describe, but I will..it’s behind the scenes with the Russian John Shuttleworth!
FRAMED by Marco Jemolo is a brilliantly imaginative and noir-influenced animated short, which investigates the role of the individual in society. In an anonymous police station, F.K. asks the Law for help in the attempt to report the abuses he has been through: his birth, his formation, his forced work. He will end up trapped in a Kafka-esque, endless nightmare.
The charming, sumptuously photographed and brilliantly acted SERVAL AND CHAUMIER: MASTERS OF SHADOWS by Arthur Goisset was Jury award winner at the 2017 Fort Lauderdale Int Film Festival. In a small fin-de-siecle, French village, Jules Chaumier, professional magician, runs into Marcel Serval, his former disciple who left 10 years ago, along with Jules’ wife Jacqueline. Their conflict and bitterness leads them to attempt the potentially lethal ‘Flight of the Phoenix’ stunt, which will determine who actually is the true “Master of Shadows”…
Uproarious Scottish documentary OOR WALLY by the talented Martin Lennon, is a lighthearted documentary short film that follows Scotland’s most unique mascot Wally the Warrior across an eventful football season. Wally also happens to be Eleanor, a mother of eight and and granny of seven.
We round things up at our Fastnet 2018 event with STEMS by Ainslie Henderson, An intricate and pain-stakingly stop-motion animation that reveals both protagonist and the animation process itself. Shot in Summerhall in Edinburgh and Oscar long-listed, Stems is a film about building puppets to make music, a brilliant spin on animated puppet movies and the art of puppeteering.
You can see our films at Fastnet Film Festival Thursday May 24th programme opens at 2pm
