Aesthetica Short Film Festival to return

The inaugural Aesthetica Short Film Festival last month drew 1,000 people to 15 locations, such as the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, Barley Hall, Mansion House, DIG, the National Railway Museum, Micklegate Bar Museum, Bar Lane Studios, City Screen, the According To McGee gallery and Thirteen Thirty One bar for film screenings from 30 countries.

During the festival of “pop-up cinema” from November 3 to 6, these were complemented by panel discussions, industry talks at York St John University, workshops, networking opportunities and a Meet The Filmmakers event at the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall.

Cherie Federico, the festival director and founder/director of the York contemporary art and culture magazine Aesthetica, described the festival as “in a nutshell, a fantastic experience”.

“It took a year and a half to put everything together, and now that’s it’s finished, all I can think about is what we can do with it next year,” says the New Yorker, who moved to York nine years ago to study an MA in English contemporary literature and fell in love with the city, its history, architecture and culture.

“I definitely want to bring different venues on board, partly because some of the capacities might need to be a tad bigger, and there are number of places I have in mind that I’d like to tap into.”

Among the successful locations was the Mansion House, the Lord Mayor of York’s residence, where all the screenings of drama shorts sold out. “It was packed, with a capacity of only 60, and people kept coming off the street and asking ‘What’s going on in here?’.

“I deliberately chose the drama strand for in there; it looked magnificent from the balcony and the sound was wonderful too. I’m delighted that the Mansion House has already asked if it can be one of the locations again next year, and so has the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall.”

Barley Hall screened documentaries, comedy and art/experimental films while City Screen’s Basement bar was turned over to thriller screenings. “That was a perfect location for those films,” says Cherie.

“Throughout the city, there was such a positive feeling over the four days among the film-goers and filmmakers, who came from across the world: South Africa, New Zealand, the USA, Australia, Norway, Denmark, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Malta, Turkey, and all corners of the UK.

“A lot of people came up from London and down from Glasgow and Edinburgh, and because York city centre is ‘pedestrianised’, it had a real festival feel to it. You would see people moving from venue to venue, which created camaraderie, and the nature and size of York meant that a lot of friendships were made.

“The most enjoyable thing was to hear the discussions taking place after each film or event, whether on big issues in the films or potential future collaborations between filmmakers – and the feedback I received from filmmakers was how much they loved the city of York.”

Among the festival successes were the masterclasses. “Two of our film-makers had a meeting with Susie Wright, from Channel 4, to discuss pitching their films to the channel, and that was exciting for me too because it happened exactly as I wanted it to happen,” says Cherie.

She was delighted by the networking side of the event, citing the example of a South African-Dutch collaboration that was set in motion during the festival.

“Fazila Wahab and Oliver Kohl from South Africa are going to start collaborating with Dutch stop-motion animator Arnold Zwanenburg – who won the People’s Choice prize with Dr Knowgood: Lion’s Pride – as they want to use stop-motion in their next film,” says Cherie.

The festival concluded with a Sunday night awards ceremony at the Yorkshire Museum, where Zwanenburg’s fellow winners were: British director Michael Barwise’s Wall, an exploration of life beside a peace wall in Northern Ireland in the Art/Experimental category; Maria de Gier’s Amatorski: Soldier, from Belgium, in the Music Video section; and Piers Thompson’s Lin, a British/Bulgarian/Turkish co-production in which a woman tries to run away from her past in an unknown country, in the drama strand.

The Guerrier Brothers won the thriller class with Cleaning Up, a British short that starred Mark Gatiss as Mr Jackson, “the perfect hitman: you see him and you die”.

“My tip from the festival is to look out for the Guerrier Brothers, who are going to go far,” says Cherie. “Since the festival, they’ve already had a meeting with Channel 4.”

The comedy winner was Tooty’s Wedding, Frederic Casella’s British tale of a young couple’s marriage hitting the rocks, while the Irish-made Hassan Everywhere, Andrew Kavanagh’s depiction of a brief but passionate friendship between an Israeli writer and a Palestinian artist, took the Animation (Adult) prize.

The documentary section was won by the New Zealand film River Dog, James Muir and Daniel Hunter’s study of a lone farmer’s struggles to reduce the environmental impact of cows grazing in a river, which also won the festival’s overall prize.

And now, the “best of the fest” can be seen on a sampler DVD that accompanies the newly published December edition of Aesthetica.

Next, Cherie and the Aesthetica team’s thoughts must turn to next year’s festival, and she has one particular addition in mind for the early November event.

“I’d like to have a guest country that we would focus on, getting filmmakers to come over to York from there,” she says. “That would be brilliant to do, because it really would facilitate an exchange of ideas and broaden cultural awareness and understanding.

“Obviously, the Venice Biennale has a focus on every country under the sun but if we could focus on just one, it would achieve a lot for us on the international scale.”

Did you know?

Put all of the Aesthetica Short Film Festival’s 1,000 visitors together and between them they saw a total of 48,000 films in York.