Short film festival opens across screens in York (From York Press)

Short film festival opens across screens in York

9:05am Wednesday 2nd November 2011 in Film reviews By Charles Hutchinson

YORK’S first international film festival opens tomorrow, and such has been the response from film-makers that the event will return next year.

Around 1,000 films were entered for the Aesthetica Short Film Festival, leading to 175 being selected for screening over four days at 15 locations across the city this week. Submissions for ASFF 2012 will open next month with further details to be announced on asff.co.uk

Conceived and directed by Aesthetica art and culture magazine director Cherie Federico, the festival of independent digital film features work from 30 countries, including Russia, Georgia, Poland, France, Australia, Spain, Saudi Arabia, Malta, South Africa, Finland, New Zealand, Greenland and Japan, as well as Britain, the Channel Islands and the United States.

These will be shown at such locations as the Merchant Adventurers’ Hall, Barley Hall, De Grey Rooms, DIG and the Mansion House. Each film will be competing for the Festival Awards, both within individual categories and for the prize of overall festival winner.

An additional prize will be the People’s Choice Award, for which the winner will be decided by nominations on Twitter. Voting involves tweeting the name of your chosen film, along with the hashtag #ASFFvote.

The screenings will cover art/experimental, music video, drama, thriller, comedy, documentary, family-friendly films and adult animation.

Jason Leonard, from York St John University, is featured in the thriller genre with his 11-minute film A Dark Room, wherein a photographer relives his life through the images he has collected.

Look out for James Keaton’s Lost Connection, featuring Celia Imrie and the ubiquitous Stephen Fry in a tale that captures the moment when self-obsession threatens to destroy relationships at the point where they matter the most.

Ray Nomoto Robison’s The Bag stars Maryln Mason, Elvis Presley’s leading lady in The Trouble With Girls, in the disturbing story of an elderly woman who has grown tired of living.

York Art Gallery presents a special screening of Catherine Yass’s exploration of the vertiginous view in High Wire on Sunday. On the Red Road Estate in North Glasgow in 2007, French high-wire artist Didier Pasquette steps out… then stops. What happens next? Find out in screenings between 10am and 4pm.

Among the eye-catching titles is Paris/Sexy by Ruth Paxton, who sums up her film thus: “Greer’s weird. Everyone in the village thinks so.” Or how about Simon Smith’s documentary Welcome To Romford, in which the drivers of A1 Taxis get all sorts of people in the back of their cabs on a Friday night? Or Duck And Cover, Charlie Brown, Mike Celona’s troubled trip through the mind of the iconic Peanuts character?

The festival has been put together by Aesthetica with festival partners York St John University, Creative York, East Coast Trains, Screen Yorkshire, the British Film Institute, the National Lottery and Coles Solicitors.

Full details of the screenings can be found in the festival programme, available online or the ASFF Festival Hub at Visit York. For festival season tickets and day passes, phone 01904 629137 or book online at asff.co.uk