The Buzz at Encounters

by SWS on 20-Nov-09 13:06

Hanging around the Watershed and specifically the delegates area yesterday in between volunteer duties, I couldn’t help but notice that there were probably more i-phones and laptops than people. Ok, maybe not, but the level of connectivity this year astounded me. I started to feel sorry for our 1994-selves at the first Brief Encounters festival, with our filo-faxes and rolodexes primatively swapping business cards and vhs tapes. Yesterday I saw a London School of Communications student doing (what can only be described) as a violent brushing action across his i-phone to that of a Romanian filmmaker at the festival. I was later informed that this was an application on the i-phone where one can ‘slide’ a business card from one handset to another. I definitely feel out of the loop….

Still this was the theme of my day, and the buzz (be it electric or otherwise) was certainly as strong as ever. With reviews, tweets and just random thoughts hitting the digi-sphere at a dizzying rate I thought back to when I was a student (all of two years ago) and how networking and simply getting yourself out there is the 1st commandment for a young filmmaker. Two days into the festival and it seemed everyone was taking full advantage.

One of my roles was to man the HP Digital Viewing library, a 9 stationed room whereby you can go and watch any of the films featured at the festival. This year, it's faster and slicker than ever and you can even get on wirelessly using your own laptop – no wonder tweets are fluttering online so fast. Yesterday it was all about New York musical/documentary filmmaking genius Jem Cohen and his two events at the Arnolfini – sadly I missed it but have it on good authority than its already being cited as one of the gems (sorry) of this year.

Something I did catch which stayed etched in my mind was Off Season by Jonathan Van Tulleken. An amazingly crafted chilling two man (well one man and a dog) tale of a man who steals from Canadian summer homes during the unforgiving winter and makes a gruesome discovery. I nearly soiled the Watersheds comfortable seats…. Pulling up a pew at the viewing library I can also highly recommend ‘Megatron’ in the Romanian Shorts, it attracted me at first because I love the Transformers but once you realise no robots are featured you get into this genuinely heart-warming tale.
Oh, and speaking of all this technology  - at least the humble pen and paper isn’t lost on everyone Encounters have provided a message book at the delegate desk….

Tagged:Encounters, South West, Short film

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