It's Nick's Birthday screening :: Bourges

WHAT: It’s Nick’s Birthday @ 11th International Festival Bandits-mages
EVENT: SI_11 (Rencontres internationales)
WHERE: L’amphithéâtre, ENSA Bourges (école nationale supérieure d’art), 7 rue Édouard-Branly, F-18000 Bourges
WHEN: This SATURDAY, 9th May between 2pm and 8pm
COST: FREE

Please check their programme for details.

The film features in their dynamically unwieldy cyber-catalogue of the future on p.144.

It's Nick's Birthday honoured at IndieLisboa'09

It's Nick's Birthday received a Special Mention from the Jury at the 6th IndieLisboa International Independent Film Festival, at the awards ceremony last Saturday night.

Barely more than a greyish-brown speck in the massive auditorium of Lisbon's art deco Cinema São Jorge, our representative Mr Cole made his way up on stage to collect the menção honrosa in the style of the film - stumbling, flickering and slightly out of tune with himself.

The full list of awards is available for perusal here.

Sun and Sangria on the Humber

In a strange and unexpected moment at about 11.45 on Wednesday morning, the charming proprietor of Sabrini's cafe (Princes Road, Hull) plonked a chilled jug of pink sangria on the terrace table in front of Mr Brown and myself, and we two out-of-towners squinted through the bright sunlight at each other: we had arrived, young gods on the Yorkshire riviera.

Feeling rather marvellous, we were ushered inside by our genial hosts - Messrs. Boyce and Jensen of the Hull Film organisation - where the Importance Of The Medium program began with Eva Weber's ethereal documentary on cranes and their drivers. Following a break for nachos and cigarettes, the moment came for It's Nick's Birthday to be unveiled to the public - a lunchbreak public 20-strong and united in festival spirit. The homemade and accident-happy ethos of the film was channelled into the atmosphere of the room through the guitar amp sound system and reinforced by the phlegmatic purr and splutter of the coffee machine and obsessive brush-strokes of the hot chilli-oriented hung paintings. Afterwards, Mr Brown and I were interviewed to video by Boyce's people, a process that could have been torturous had the sun and the breeze and the people (and the bellyful of punch) not been configured so divinely, and which was all the same makey of pitsweat.

For weeks in advance, we had awaited with childlike anticipation our trip to Hull's Glimmer short film festival, so it was perhaps inevitable the hit-rate of our daydream-embellished expectations would be at best off-centre, if never off-target. Having been tipped that Hull would smell of death (it did a bit) and planned in mouthwatering detail the fish and chips we would acquire for our midnight train journey back to Manchester (we didn't feel like eating after an unsettling aperitif of top-drawer David Firth animations), we met reality half-way on discovering that Hull wasn't in fact a coastal port and the big bit of water by it was (to quote Mr Brown) "merely an estuary". We had promised ourselves we'd see the sea, and the see the sea we would: Mr Brown, and myself, and a young lady from Australia whose acquaintance we made over sangria at Sambrini's, stared out at the glistening brown Humber, alone and together, imagining it to be the ocean for the best part of forty minutes. Although we stood in silence, the synchronised remapping (more accurately re-demapping) of three neural networks (one of which was Australian) was felt to be an adequate riposte to the tyranny of fluvial geography. (Mooring fees in the area have not been affected).

It's Nick's Birthday screenings :: Hull & Lisbon

WHAT: It’s Nick’s Birthday @ GLIMMER: The 7th Hull International Short Film Festival
EVENT: The Importance Of The Medium 1
WHEN: This WEDNESDAY, 22nd April, 12 noon – 1pm
WHERE: Sabrini's Café, Princes Avenue, Hull, HU5 3QX
COST: FREE

WHAT: It’s Nick’s Birthday @ IndieLisboa ’09 International Festival of Independent Cinema
EVENT: International Short Competition 4
WHEN: This SUNDAY, 26th April, 9.30pm
& THURSDAY, 30th April 6.45pm
WHERE: Cinema São Jorge, Screening Room 3
COST: Around 3,50 € (click for concessions/groups)

It's Nick's Birthday

It’s Nick’s Birthday, the new short film from L’Institute Zoom, is all done, feather-dusted and ready to shamble on out into the bright and boisterous world beyond the Zoomcitta walls:

It’s Nick’s Birthday

UK, 2009, Super-8mm (digital transfer for exhibition), 35 minutes
Music by Aidan Smith :: Written & Directed by Graeme Cole

A home-made Super-8 musical. Over an all-day drinking session, the dreams of a troubled romantic and his companions are worn away by ennui and isolation. With songs and dancing.

Capturing the unconventional handcrafted aesthetic of Aidan Smith’s songs, this is a musical for those who wouldn’t normally go near one. The dancing creaks and the vocals strain when four ordinary folk attempt to impose meaning and colour on their mundane and aimless lives. Sundays don’t come with a three-act structure, and we don’t have hidden reserves of magical talent: we have mood swings, private theories and temporary epiphanies.

The film was shot in early 2007 and has been waiting patiently for release while the post-production crew’s intense sleeping schedule and neurotic imperfectionism weaved their influence into the finished artefact. It’s Nick’s Birthday will receive its public premiere in Hull (home town of Nicholas D. Hill – the aeroplane enthusiast, misfit and L’Institute Zoom bit-part player who inspired the title character) this Wednesday 22nd April.

Next stop on the It’s Nick’s Birthday mini-tour of European ports is Lisbon, where the film will have its International Premiere next Sunday, and a further screening on Thursday 30th.