Bird's Eye View

Harriet video reports WED 11 MARCH

Wednesday I bagged a ticket for The Imaginarium, that had sold out. I was last in, with the remaining seat conveniently in the front row, in easy dancing reach of all the panellists and the very capable (and entertaining) event host  James Mullighan, from one of BEV’s festival partners – Shooting People.

My easy heckling position meaning I had a good view of the guests presenting their intriguing dance motion capture film project – filmmakers Bert and Bertie, Centroid, and English National Ballet. But for some reason the sound didn’t pick up too well on video, so I grabbed duo Bert and Bertie in the bar straight afterwards for a quick twirl of their hats, and a snappy digest of how they had found presenting their work to a captivated audience.

Next event that evening, I managed to claim a front row seat again for the much anticipated Birds Eye View Review: Sex on Screen debate. Again, another sellout event, and an excellent panel (Writer and Broadcaster Rowan Pelling, Film Director Carine Adler, Coco De Mer Entrepreneur Sam Roddick, Humanist Porn Director Petra Joy and Film Director Mike Figgis) produced some interesting discussion on the female perspective of sex on screen, the difference between porn and erotica, and what it is that turns people on when watching movies… with a diverse selection of short films at the end.

I braved asking a question – which ran something along the lines of “if more and more women direct porn, do you think it will become more suitable/healthy/safer/educational for young women to watch porn, or not…” – though didn’t film it because it just felt a bit confrontational pointing it at the panel, and with all the talk about sex on screen a sudden silly paranoia swept over me that it would be seen as rather voyeuristic.

So after the event, I began editing some clips of the talk together for the blog, but it quickly escalated into a mammoth video for want of giving each panellist a fair snippet of their opinion. The event was documented properly on snazzy professional cameras (and will be edited together and available to watch at some point hopefully), so rather than give you some snippets of the debate, I caught panellist and host Rowan Pelling outside before the batteries of my camera ran out.