Flipside film festival

Flipside is an annual international film festival which is held in Plymouth, UK and focusses on independent and experimental film practice. Flipside is was conceived and is curated by film-makers Dan Paolantonio and Lucy Leake.

The inaugural 'Flipside Film Festival' ran from May 21st – 31st 2008, in Plymouth, UK, and showcased both feature-length and short films. The 'Flipside' ethos is drawn along strictly non-hierarchical lines and is intended as a filmic celebration and exploration of alternate, unorthodox and under-represented views of our world, rather than as a market place for 'film product.'

'Open Call' film entries for the first Flipside Festival could be of any genre or film-making style, although were required to explore one or more of the following thematic areas:

1) The View From Here: Films which provide the viewer / audience with the opportunity to literally 'see' our world from different and unfamiliar visual perspectives, achieved by manipulating 'the real' with various alchemic cinematic techniques & technological trickery.

2) View Point: Films which celebrate non-mainstream / non-traditional and minority viewpoints and experiences of our world (especially political / spiritual / ideological viewpoints and experiences that are under-represented by mainstream broadcast media): A thematic celebration of the diversity of experience in our world and a challenge to the institutional shortcomings of 'broad' cast media.

3) 4:3 ReView: Films which creatively embrace 'endangered' media practices, processes and technologies, featuring everything in the 4:3 aspect ratio, from Super8, Standard 8, & Standard 16mm film, to analogue & pixelvision 'toy' video. This is the thematic antidote to HDTV, where the focus is the celebration and exploration of the gloriously rarefied and obsolescent, rather than the aggressive product-profit driven 'technical redundancy & replacement' industry model

In addition to Flipside's Open Call there was also an 'Official Selection' programme of films as follows:

'Tony Hill: A Retrospective' (Including Laws of Nature / Downside Up / History of the Wheel (UK)'Super-8 Cities' by Nathan Coombs (UK)'Our Sufferings in This Land' by Ed Hill (UK / Palestine)'She's A Punk Rocker: UK' by Zillah Minx (UK)'There is No Authority but Yourself' by Alexander Oey (NL)'Confusions of an Unmarried Couple' by Jason & Brett Butler (CAN)'ALF: Behind the Mask' by Shannon Keith (USA)'The Dead Brothers: Death is Not the End' & 'Zownir: Radical Man' by M.A. Littler (GER)'Dancehall Queen' & 'Westway to the World' by Don Letts (UK)

In addition to programmed Open Call & Official Selection film screenings there was various thematically relevant film workshops. The 2008 festival was anchored around a keynote screening and panel discussion event in which the works of pioneering film artist Don Letts was explored and celebrated, with Letts in attendance & leading the event.

Flipside is strictly non-hierarchical and both established and emerging film-makers shared the same platform for their works. The emphasis was very much on furthering cinematic debate and celebrating diversity of experience in film.

Flipside 2 will explore the 'familial lens' as its central theme and is scheduled for May 2009 in Plymouth UK.

Flipside is the largest film festival event held annually in Plymouth, UK

External links

* http://flipside.co.nr