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The Birds Eye Film Festival (8-13th April) is now in its 10th year and details have been announced of its annual International Women’s Day Gala (8th March) and Festival Opening and Closing night films, continuing the organization’s mission to celebrate and support the best international female filmmaking talent.
Nana Ekvtimishvili’s and Simon Groß’s award-winning Georgian feature In Bloom will open the Festival on Tuesday 8th April where it will receive its UK Premiere. Lola Bessis and Ruben Amar’s touching French-American family drama Swim Little Fish Swim, which will also receive its UK premiere, will close the six day Festival on Sunday 13th April. Ahead of this, there will be a special screening of Wonder Women! The Untold Story of American Superheroines on International Women’s Day which takes place on Saturday 8th March.
The 2014 Festival promises to be Birds Eye View’s biggest and best outing, with a host of UK premieres and special events featuring some of the world’s leading female filmmakers and rising new talents. The programme also includes industry programmes supported by the British Council and Creative Skillset, plus much more in six days of endlessly inspiring women from across the globe.
This year’s line-up also features a 20th anniversary screening of Gurinder Chadha’s seminal British comedy Bhaji on the Beach which will screen as part of a British Bright Lights day at BFI Southbank on Saturday 12th April, with Chadha in attendance. Birds Eye View’s much-loved Fashion Loves Film programme also returns with classic fashion films, celebrations of countercultures, style icons and celluloid trendsetters, as well as the Sound and Silents live music programme, this year celebrating Women in Jazz with new commissions and touring events.
Celebrated as a major discovery of the 2013 Berlinale, In Bloom kicks off the Festival on Tuesday 8th April where it will receive its UK premiere with filmmakers Simon Groß and Nana Ekvtimishvili in attendance. This beautifully crafted story follows two young girls coming-of-age in post-Soviet Georgia. Tblisi, 1992: as civil war rages in the newly independent state, 14 year-old best friends Eka and Natia just want to talk gossip, music and boys. But as insecurity and fear overcome everyday life, their childhoods come to an abrupt halt in this multi-award-winning, semi-autobiographical drama.
The Festival’s Closing Night Film is the irresistibly charming, bittersweet comedy-drama Swim Little Fish Swim, which will have its UK premiere at BFI Southbank with the filmmakers in attendance. The film follows three ordinary people trying to make sense of their lives. A New York nurse works to make ends meet, her idealist musician husband struggles with everyday responsibilities, and the daughter of a world-famous artist seeks independence. Hailed as the French ‘Tiny Furniture’ and packed with brilliantly inventive imagery and a score drawn from NYC’s live music scene, Bessis & Amar’s acclaimed debut is refreshing, moving and often laugh-out-loud funny.
In addition to the Festival, Birds Eye View is excited to host a special screening of the powerful Wonder Women!, a film which traces the fascinating birth, evolution and legacy of the Wonder Woman figure and introduces audiences to a dynamic group of fictional and real-life superheroines fighting for positive role models for girls, both on screen and off. Directed by Kristy Guevara-Flanagan and produced by Kelcey Edwards, WONDER WOMEN! offers a vital and entertaining counterpoint to the male-dominated super hero genre and is the perfect film to celebrate International Women’s Day at BFI Southbank.
Events and screening will take place at BFI Southbank, Barbican, Curzon Soho, ICA, Electric Cinema and several more venues. The full programme will be announced in February.
For more info, check out http://birds-eye-view.co.uk
Reviewer of movies, videogames and music since 1994. Aortic valve operation survivor from the same year. Running DVDfever.co.uk since 2000. Nobel Peace Prize winner 2021.