Film Preview: Kinofilm Festival

Article published: Monday, April 26th 2010

Kinofilm, Manchester’s long-running short film festival, returns this week after a three year absence, renamed as the to-the-point Kinofilm Manchester European Short Film Festival. Screenings take place Tuesday 27 April – Sunday 2 May at the AMC Cinema, alongside educational events, discussions and debates.

It’s an ambitious line-up filled with programming coups such as the Oscar Nominated Shorts screening (Sunday 2 May), a series of locally produced films and a strand of eight debut features from directors who have crossed over from the shorts genre. Each day of the festival runs 10am – late night.

Anyone taking advantage of the ridiculously good value festival pass might as well book the week off work. For film fans especially, Kinofilm looks worth taking advantage of any holidays due. For students, the country-specific selections should stand out, for educational purposes of course.

The full schedule disguises any reported funding difficulties faced by a once-popular event given short shrift from the City Council since the last festival, in 2006. Like many other small and niche festivals, Kinofilm appears to have suffered around the same time as the funding guzzling Manchester International Festival arrived on the scene. No matter, it seems. Kinofilm has garnered enough sponsorship and support from European cultural funding partners and Vision+Media, the northwest’s main film funding body to pump for a fully fledged event.

Organisers are even adding an art exhibition into the mix. The Polish Film Poster show is on now and until 16th May in the unusual premises of The Triangle Shopping Centre. The location harks back to the Kinofilm festival tradition of presenting films in unexpected surroundings, and ties in well with the Polish Shorts screenings.

Between the astonishing 30 short film programmes, a range of seminars and workshops covering acting, screenwriting and editing are all open to the public – advanced booking is strongly advised. For festival director John Wojowski, Kinofilm 2010 is a product of hard work and passion. “For the last four years Manchester has been without an International Film Festival and it was my ambition to make sure that Kinofilm would return. We have seen over 1100 short films submitted from all over Europe, and a fantastic team have worked hard to ensure that we are able to present the best to North West audiences”. The end product, it seems, is there for all to enjoy.

Daisy Priestly

The Kinofilm Manchester European Short Film Festival runs Tuesday 27 April – Sunday 2 May at the AMC Cinema, unless otherwise stated in the programme.
Passes are available for £35, allowing entry to all screenings.
See here for the full line-up of the Kinofilm Festival.

More: Culture, Manchester, Screen

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