Elliot Grove

Elliot Grove is a Canadian-born film producer who founded both the Raindance Film Festival in 1993 and the British Independent Film Awards in 1998.

Biography

Despite being unable to watch TV or films until his early teens due to the constraints of his Amish background, Grove was curious about art and film. He, thus, followed up formal art school training at Central Technical School in Toronto, Ontario with a series of jobs behind the scenes in the film industry.

Working as a scenic artist on 68 feature films and over 700 commercials in his native Toronto, he developed a distaste for the wasted resources on set and union bureaucracy that prevented aspiring filmmakers like himself from getting their own features off the ground. [ [http://www.canadianfilmmaker.com/content/view/94/21/ CanadianFilmMaker - Elliot Grove ] ]

Raindance

Elliot moved to London in the late 1980s and in 1993 he launched the Raindance Film Festival, a festival devoted to independent filmmaking and its emerging talent.

Initially, Raindance catered mainly to American independent filmmakers, but over the years the participants have become more global. The 2007 festival line-up included 93 independent features and 150 shorts from 52 countries.

Course Instruction

Elliot lectures on screenwriting and filmmaking throughout the UK, Europe, North America and Japan; in 1992 he set up the training division of Raindance which now offers nearly 2 dozen evening and weekend masterclasses [ [http://www.raindance.co.uk/site/index.php?aid=10 raindance.co.uk: London's leading provider of practical filmmaking courses ] ] on writing, directing, producing and marketing your film. These courses are designed for those with no formal training who want to break into the film industry, or for professionals who want to refresh their skills. Making films is expensive, so Elliot and Raindance work on the assumption that course participants do not have Hollywood-scale amounts of money to throw around.

Publications

In 2001 Focal Press published his book: "Raindance Writers Lab: How to Write and Sell the Hot Script" (ISBN 0240516362). His second book, [http://www.raindance.co.uk/site/index.php?id=120,887,0,0,1,0&highlight=books "Raindance Producer’s Lab Lo-To-No Budget Filmmaking"] was published by Focal Press in July 2004. Both books have had multiple reprints. His first novel, "The Bandit Queen" based on his experiences on the Ogaden Desert [Ogaden Desert] as a child, which will be published in 2009 by [http://www.bloomsbury.com/ Bloomsbury Press] and illustrated by Dave McKean. He currently has two other books in pre-production, one of which, 150 Workouts To Becoming A Filmmaker is to be published in 2009 by Barrons in the USA and A C Black in the UK.

Production

Upholding the ethos of Raindance, Elliot wrote, produced and directed 1997's feature, [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286191/ "Table 5"] , for just over £200. [ [http://www.littlebigvoice.org.uk/spoke/elliotGrove/ howies® Little Big Voice: who spoke? Elliot Grove ] ]

His production company operates under the Raindance banner and is currently developing a slate of ten features. In 2005 he produced [http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0483719/ "The Living and the Dead"] an arty British chiller, the world premiere which was at the [http://www.filmfestivalrotterdam.com/ Rotterdam Film Festival] in January 2006. He is currently producing three more features are scheduled to start production.

References

External links

*
* [http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=89967675 Elliot Grove's Myspace]
* [http://www.raindance.co.uk/ Raindance Website]
* [http://www.raindance.tv/ Raindance.TV]
* [http://www.bifa.org.uk/ British Independent Film Awards]
* [http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=74340034 Raindance Myspace]
* [http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2537051554 Raindance Film Festival Facebook]
* [http://www.makingthefilm.com/interview5.html Making the Film interviews Elliot Grove]