BEV celebrates & supports international women filmmakers. The flagship BEV Film Festival runs at London's BFI Southbank and ICA, with exclusive previews, shorts, retrospectives, training and cutting-edge live performances.
On Tuesday my hosting skills (and general knowledge/experience/enthusiasm for the digital advertising world) were called upon, to welcome the filmmakers and introduce for the She Says: Meet the Advertisers event.
But beforehand I wanted to get in on the action at Connecting Voices: Films from the Commonwealth and arrived at the ICA just in time to meet the two filmmakers who had travelled all the way from India and Trinidad & Tobago – Leena Manimekalai and Camille Selvon Abrahams (respectively) – for the screening of their films. They were both super lovely and an exciting highlight was meeting Camille’s friend and filmmaker Horace Ové, who holds the Guinness World Record for the first Black British film-maker to direct a feature-length film Pressure.
Monday was another busy day, so busy, ahem, that I only really managed to capture one event with enough content to keep you BEV blog readers interested…
Below is a video from the Peace Mission: Welcome to Nollywood screening. The event included a Q&A with the amazing Peace Anyiam-Fiberesima, one of Nollywood’s top producers who features in the documentary, which was about (yes, you’ve guessed it) Nollywood – the third largest film industry. I was particularly excited because this event was hosted by Zina Saro Wiwa, who was one of my favourite presenters on The Culture Show.
Sunday was, of course, International Womens Day, and was host to our Regional Screenings Tour - the UK wide, simultaneous screening of our programmes of shorts from the BEV Opening Night, at 3.30pm in London, Brighton, Edinburgh, Cambridge and Newcastle.
So, after first nosing around to see how the Mediascapes workshop at the ICA was going (read Constance Fleuriot‘s account of the workshop here), I dashed down to the Regional Screening at the Ritzy in Brixton to meet local filmmaker Paulette James there and have a super quick chat before she went in. Soon on the blog we’ll report back in more depth about what happened in each city…
So, Saturday was definitely a highlight for me. At the ICA I captured some of the Mary Harron Masterclass as well as the repose before the Bettie Page screening, where we met Claire from Nina’s Hair Parlour who had her photo taken with Mary and might be bringing down their vintage hairdressing skills to the closing night party this Friday… I must admit, I was unexpectedly too shy to talk to Mary on camera, but caught Rachel and her chatting about how the masterclass went afterwards.
Friday was over before I knew it… but I managed to catch a bit of the Women in Film and Television networking event (watch out for the shameless plug of the Last Laugh Comedy Night event on Thursday where my short film will be showing, I just couldn’t bring myself to edit it out…), also arrived for the end bit of the London Girl Geeks innovation event, and was very pleased to grab some quality time with Nicolette Krebitz (The Heart is a Dark Forest) and Franny Armstrong (The Age of Stupid) in the ICA foyer before they went in for their director Q&As….
This little rehearsal video just came through from The Monroe Transfer who are performing live to Pandora’s Box on Wed 11 March 6pm at the BFI Southbank.
This is just a very small glimpse of the amazing musical talent that will be accompanying the classic silent film starring iconic Louise Brooks.
There a just a few tickets left now so hurry if you want to see this unique event!
