Bird's Eye View

A ten-day torrent: BEV director Rachel Millward looks back on the 2011 Festival

BEV Founder-Director Rachel Millward

And so another year’s work flies by in a ten-day torrent of events, screenings, speeches, conversations with filmmakers, parties, jury meetings, live music, awards and celebration. It is my very great pleasure to announce that the seventh Birds Eye View Film Festival was a staggering success!

There’s nothing you want more, once you’ve selected the best possible films, than to have as many people as possible see them. This year we had 30% more attendees than ever before, bringing our total audience soaring above 11,000. But that’s not all: an unprecedented 0.45million viewers saw something of BEV this year, in the form of our Bloody Women trailer on the Horror Channel. I’m guessing that’s 449,000ish who hadn’t previously heard of BEV. We also packed out our single biggest event to date at the Queen Elizabeth Hall – double the size of the NFT1. So yes, as far as audiences go – we couldn’t be more thrilled.

Grammy winner Imogen Heap at Southbank Centre

Creatively, it might seem that film festivals stop taking risk as soon as the programme is announced. But Birds Eye View is more than just film screenings. We risk premieres of live performances in a strand of Sound & Silents for which we commission new live scores from female artists to silent films. The highlight for me (in fact, one of the cultural highlights of my life!) was undoubtedly Imogen Heap‘s score for unaccompanied choir, performed live by Imogen and the fabulous Holst Singers, to Germaine Dulac’s The Seashell And The Clergyman. Each collaborator – Dulac, in making what is commonly known as the first surrealist film; Holst Singers, by experimenting for the first time with singing soundscapes created by a world leading pop artist rather than their usual classical repertoire; and Imogen Heap, who had never before composed to picture, or for unaccompanied choir – took a major creative risk. And it truly paid off. The result was a mind-blowing bringing together of the old and the new, of picture and sound, of descriptive clarity and emotional expression. There were six other fantastic pieces of new music for silent films in the Festival. I think heaven must be a buzz with pioneering women filmmakers dancing with delight as their films are brought to life for 2011.

Still focussing on live aspects of the festival, we enjoyed for the first time this year a public script reading at BAFTA. One of the products of our She Writes lab for emerging writers, Saint Joan is a hilarious comedy, and we were thrilled to have Celia Imrie starring as the lead role for our reading. Here’s hoping that Saint Joan and more of the She Writes projects get picked up for development and we see some of the work of these writers hitting our screens in years to come.

Then of course, the filmmakers themselves. I’m always in awe of these women who show such creativity, skill, courage and tenacity to share their cinematic vision with us. So it’s one of the thrills of a festival to have the chance to meet filmmakers and talk about their work. On Opening Night I talked to two filmmakers whose short films are propelling their careers forward. Brit Jane Linfoot, who has just been taken on by a producer to get her first feature made, and Lisa James Larsson who is making waves in Sweden. It was a huge pleasure to host the Q&A with Lucy Walker, still coming down from the Oscars frenzy, as we gave Countdown To Zero its first UK screening. Lucy is one of those women for whom even greater success feels inevitable. I hadn’t realised how strongly she wanted to make drama in the future, in fact always has done, and after happening to be there as she discussed the casting for her feature, I’m now eagerly anticipating her entry into fiction.

Susanne Bier's In A Better World

The deserving winner of our Best Feature Award was Susanne Bier’s In A Better World. This is a staggeringly good film – like a rich, complex and deeply affecting novel. So many people who saw it at the Festival commented to me later that they were carrying it with them for days after seeing it – so deeply touched by its powerful message of forgiveness and its profound meditation on violence. Susanne Bier was with us for our 2010 Festival, and couldn’t make it again this year – I think when you win an Oscar your life is completely taken over for a while, and you are no longer permitted to sleep. But it was a treat to have her son, Gabriel, collecting the award on her behalf. He passed on a message from his Mum that women shouldn’t feel they have to choose between family and filmmaking, and there he was as living proof! A very apt and inspiring end to a wonderful festival.

And now, the challenge of making this all happen again next year begins! Do keep in touch (you can sign-up to our newsletter for regular updates on BEV events across the country), and take a moment to consider joining the Nest (with exclusive year-round member benefits in return for supporting BEV’s work) – and we’ll see you again in 2012!