Blue Moon Film Festival, Newcastle upon Tyne
Stories about women’s under-representation behind the camera, and dodgy stereotyping in front of it, keep on coming – the latest being a UN-backed study last month that found “deep-seated discrimination and pervasive stereotyping” of women in film. All that makes new, female-focused festivals like this all the more vital. The small programme includes two very different docs on womanhood here: Wonder Women!, on female superheroes; and Kim Longinotto’s Salma, on an admirable Indian poet. There’s also a French comedy (Camille Rewinds), a night of avant garde silent classics (Maya Deren, Germaine Dulac, etc) with live accompaniment, and an “open film night” for local women in search of an audience. Men are encouraged to attend as well, by the way.
Various venues, Tue to 25 Nov
Glasgay!, Glasgow
The most succinctly named festival on the planet, and although the emphasis is on performing arts, there’s a healthy film slant to the LGBT-themed proceedings. Not least because the headline performer is Mr Trash Pope himself, John Waters, who gives a reliably raucous autobiographical lecture, This Filthy World Volume 2. The films are suitably diverse, led by new drama Love Is Strange, in which Alfred Molina and John Lithgow play a New York couple forced out of their comfort zone.
Various venues, Mon to 15 Nov
Kickstarter Film Festival, London
You wouldn’t get far in Hollywood with a pitch like “1980s-tastic martial-arts/cop-thriller pastiche featuring dinosaurs, Vikings and Hitler”, (that’s the premise of Kung Fury) but thanks to Kickstarter, such dreams can became cherished cult movies. It’s safe to say the crowdfunding site has changed the film-making landscape: it has helped back 40,000 movie projects and raise $240m of investment since 2009. Its features are also reaching the big screen – as with the recent Obvious Child (a pretty un-obvious abortion-themed romcom). That’s one of the highlights of this day-long festival showing what the project has achieved so far.
Prince Charles Cinema, WC2, Sat
London International Animation Festival
It’s all CGI on the big screen these days, but the real innovation in animation is often found elsewhere, among small operations with more imagination than budget, working in media as diverse as paint, sculpture, collage, sand or puppets. All of this and more can be found among the 200 or so films here, along with all-ages workshops to try some techniques out yourself. Highlights include Signe Baumane’s pencil-drawn family memoir Rocks In My Pockets, which she describes as “a funny film about depression”, and colourful Brazilian adventure The Boy And The World, while the shorts programmes include kids’ films, docs and a survey of the Parisian animation scene. Highlights from the festival will play at some 50 cinemas nationwide over the coming months.
Various venues, Fri to 2 Nov
