Directors Notes on the Festival Trail

Last weekend, MarBelle & Sarah headed to Exit 6, where they debuted Directors Notes’ new When & How to Release Your Film Online talk (industry bodies, festivals & film schools get in touch to book) as part of the festival’s inaugural Industry Day.

If you’re heading out on the UK film festival trail this Autumn, you can catch them at Encounters this week—where Rob will also be in attendance—Bolton International Film Festival next week, followed by HollyShorts London and Foyle Film Festival in November, joining a variety of panels, industry sessions and of course, propping up the bar so come say hi.

Shithead

Riley Donigan explains how he utilised slow zooms, frenetic editing and prosthetics to underpin the premise of his absurd body horror comedy Shithead, where the titular character - brilliantly embodied by actor Will Duncan - roves around New York with a literal grotesque manifestation of his internal anguish as he descends into madness.

Lace

A reimagining of vampiric transformation through dance, we speak to Jason Bock about rejecting clichés to find the raw emotional truth of undergoing a horrific metamorphosis as dancer Strauss Serpent finds himself overtaken by a remorseless ancient hunger in visceral Movement music video Lace.

Ebony & Ivory

After first speaking to him about his stomach churning debut, The Greasy Strangler back in 2016, Jim Hosking returns to DN to discuss his singular brand of comedy and takes us inside the creation of Ebony & Ivory, his revisionist fake biopic about a song that no one's fascinated by, starring regular collaborators Gil Gex & Sky Elobar as musical legends Stevie & Paul.

This Is a Story Without a Plan

We discover how the repetitive feeling of "watching an explosion slowly unfolding" led animator Cassie Shao to create experimental mixed media relationship short film This is a Story Without a Plan, and how she uses filmmaking to better understand both her feelings and herself.