You Be The Judge II
This Time It’s Personal!
Remember last year when Reg “Bomber” Lancaster presented us with a selection of films from BIAFF which we then judged and compared our scores with those of the official judges? You don’t? Ah, I can’t really blame you for wiping it from your memories.
Well, for this week’s club meeting young Reginald and his long suffering assistant Lady Annabelle have decided to subject us to a second round of already judged films to be judged again. This time the selection comes from the UK submissions for the annual UNICA (Union internationale du cinéma) film competition. As the name suggests (although someone should explain to the French how acronyms work), the UNICA festival is a film competition held in a different country each year with an international line-up of entries. The 2012 competition – the 74th – will be held in Ruse which, unless it has been misplaced or has left home, is in Bulgaria and will run from August 25th to September 1st. If you are interested then more info can be found HERE.
The films Reg will subject to OVFM scrutiny have been awarded Diploma, Bronze, Silver or Gold prizes and our mission, should we choose to accept it, is to decide which film won which award. Sounds easy right? Well, as I understand it, Reg has promised to set fire to anyone who gets them wrong so I guess we’ll have to take this seriously after all.
Now, I usually post a link to a website for further information but if I do that someone of you *might* be tempted to take a sneak peek at the results of the previous years ahead of this week’s meeting. I’m not saying any of you *would* but some of you *might*.
So, that’s what is in store for us on Tuesday. See you there?
UNICA is amazing, on my first visit we saw progs. from Iran, USA, Russia and Argentina,in the list of 28 countries. All coming together for the sake of films.
But even International Judges do not always give the results you may expect!!
And so it came to pass that the good folk of OVFM sat through a slew of films and did guess the prizes they did receive from the judges at the UNICA Films Festival.
The films on show were (awards in parenthesis):
1. 225 by Christopher David. An SFX heavy tale of a race between a British Rail train and a trio of spaceships. (Bronze)
2. The Lecture by Gordon Bullock. A short film about waiting (and waiting and waiting) for the punchline. (Diploma)
3. Elegia by Geoff Addis. A look at the process of making of a double bass. (Bronze)
4. The Prodigy by Phil Martin. The dreams of a young chessmaster. (Diploma)
5. Rocket Boy Roger by Russell Hollis & James Robinson. One of my favourites of the evening, an ambitious and largely dialogue free tale of a young boy looking to escape reality in his cardboard rocket ship. (Silver – Should have been Gold in my opinion)
6. Making Music by Tristam Thomas. A documentary on providing the music for a feature film. (Diploma – Another travesty of voting there. This was professional level stuff)
7. In The National interest by Phil Martin. Very well made and fascinating recount of political malfeasance during WWII. (Gold and deservedly so).
8. My Darling John by Valley Films. A girl writes a break-up letter. (Diploma)
Then we had three entries from the Minute Movie World Cup where we had to guess which one was the big winner.
9. Control Duel by Cardiff CVS. Two naughty air traffic control operators.
10. I Just Knew by Phil Martin. A couple reminisce. (Winner)
11. The Visitor by John Guile. Oh no, it’s the mother-in-law!
An interesting array of films on show there which I am sure served to inspire the creative juices of the club members to try and match the quality of these fine entries. It is certainly a testament to the standard of UK amateur film makers that they can produce such wonderful works and who knows, maybe one day a film from OVFM will join them on the annals of the UNICA catalogue?
Thanks again to Reg and Annabelle for organising this for us.