BFI Future Festival

I had a lovely time this afternoon in darkened rooms. 

I originally felt a bit guilty getting tickets for some of these screenings at the BFI Future Festival as the main point of the festival is for young film makers to network but when I saw the number of empty seats at each ‘sold out’ event I stopped worrying - they do need to sort out their website and bookings for another time though.  

Anyway, a star attraction for me today was Alice Oseman talking about how they broke into the various industries they are now working in, and about their writing process.  Although there was, of course, a focus on Heartstopper, it was good to step away from that a bit and hear how this talented young person has come so far so quickly.  A bit that chimed with me particularly, was the discussion about character, personality and story arc coming first, and how gender and sexual identity are important but not the only point, despite this being the aspect that has driven so much of the recent commentary around their work.  And of course, Oseman is interested in a lot more, as their other novels so far have already shown.  Really interested to see what they do next once they have finally finished with Heartstopper over the next few years. 

The second part of the afternoon was one of the screenings of shorts from young film makers and there were some lovely pieces in there, particularly in animation and documentary.  All are up on the BFI YouTube channel for a couple of weeks here. 

The day made me feel nicely positive about the future of the creative arts, regardless of the nonsense going on in the world at the moment, so I came home with a spring in my step. 

Edit:  I have been watching some more of the shorts online today.  Loved Being Human and Darkside. Migrants is a really moving animation. Traditional documentaries Play On and Pacing the Pool are pretty good too.  Also liked Catastrophe, Her Fight and Closing Up, and Stunt trouble was fun too… The awards are tomorrow so interesting to see which of the 50 -odd nominees go away with prizes