Congratulations to Finlay, Adrian and all the team behind Cutting Loose for picking-up the jury prize for Best Short Documentary at the RiverRun International Film Festival in North Carolina (USA).

This well-attended, well respected festival in the heartlands of America is run as a non-profit cultural organization dedicated to the role of cinema as a conduit of powerful ideas and diverse viewpoints. The festival’s mission is to foster a greater appreciation of cinema and a deeper understanding of the many people, cultures and perspectives offered by our world through regular interaction with great films and filmmakers.

On that note, we welcome the people of North Carolina into the lives of Scotland’s prison population – their hairstyles, lifestyles, hopes and dreams.

As part of GI – Glasgow’s biennial festival of visual art – this weekend at Tramway you can take part in a unique film-theater-visual art collaboration featuring one of DigiCult’s most experienced alumni, Graham Eatough (Lament 2003, Missing 2007).

Funded by Creative Scotland, The Making of Us is a cross-media, cross-platform  collaboration between film/theatre writer-director Graham, visual artist Graham Fagen and director of photography Michael McDonough (Winter’s Bone), managed and staged at Tramway by another DigiCult alumni, veteran Scottish producer Angela Murray (Room for The Night, 2002).

For an insight into the thinking behind the project, watch this video. And for tickets, contact Tramway direct. There’s a limited number of performances over the weekend – Friday 20th (8pm), Saturday 21st (3pm, 8pm) and Sunday 22nd (8pm). Tickets are free but need to be booked in advance (with returnable deposit of £5).

As part of the audience for Making of Us, you will become part of the film resulting from the weekend’s live performance.

Leading the way in the last couple of weeks, Iain Gardner’s award winning animation ‘The Tannery” has sold to broadcaster SBS in Australia whilst Michael Pearce’s multi-award winning live action “Rite” has sold to Canal+ in Poland.

With Rite and Jessica Ashman’s “Fixing Luka” now represented for World Sales by Spanish agency Freak, the company is pursuing more strategic alliances with distributors worldwide, aiming to push our talent and stories beyond the festival circuit into mainstream circulation.

As DigiCult’s Incubator feature slate takes shape, this sales experience will help prepare the company for its first step into feature production in 2013.

DigiCult’s Incubator programme intensified over the winter months.

Building on last year’s call for talent and projects, we have five feature length stories now in development with Scottish based writers and writer-directors.

The cross genre slate features drama, horror, thriller and comedy material from Gregor Johnstone (Night of the Wolf), Norrie Bissell (The Last Man In Europe), Sam Firth (Isobel), Marcus Harbern (Cape Wrath) & Tom K. McCarthy (Persevere).

Currently at outline, the first scripts will appear in the summer.

Congratulations to Michael Pearce. DigiCult’s production Rite has won La Prix De La Realisation (Best Director Award) at the 28th Festival of European Cinema in Lille this week. In the words of festival representative Clara Mamelle:

“The Selection Committee and the whole team of the European Film Festival thank you for sending your short film for this 28th edition – without you, the selection would not have been the same!

Amongst the 1,916 films received, we selected those that seemed to us the very best: 62 short films of unmatched quality, mirroring both the diversity of styles, of registers, and of origins.

Beyond the pleasure that we, members of the organization, took in discovering your work, and later presenting it to the public of Lille, there is the pride of seeing the selection applauded by the audience throughout the week and several times by the different juries during the closing ceremony.

For the 28th consecutive year, the Festival is a great achievement, but this year has been exceptional and we want to thank you again, because the quality of the short films offered is undoubtedly the key to the success of this 27th edition and the enthusiasm of spectators at the Festival!”

Shot in Autumn 2010 on Skye, this twenty minute film is a powerful, poetic evocation of contemporary life in the North West of Scotland featuring memorable performances from two local actors Lorne MacFadyen (The Angel’s Share, Foxy & Marina) and Annie Macleod (Seachd – The Inaccessible Pinnacle).

As Catriona eloquently explains in her notes on the film, she embarked on A Cuillin Rising “to examine the draw of my heritage, but also my disassociation with it. I wanted to try and capture the space between tradition and modernity; the isolation of being young compounded by living in a remote place, with its ancient landscape, rising above.”

Born in Inverness, Catriona first trained at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama before completing a Masters of Fine Arts in Advanced Film Practice at the Screen Academy in Edinburgh. Her graduation film I’M IN AWAY FROM HERE premiered in competition at the 65th Venice International Film festival in 2008; was nominated for a BAFTA emerging Talent Award the following year, and has been screened at festivals throughout the world.

Produced in association with Urbancroft – an emerging Scottish production company based in Glasgow’s Film City – producer Martyn Robertson assembled an impressive team to realise the piece including cinematographer Tania Gallis (Burn My Body, Whore, Fulll Firearms), composer P.G. Six and Catriona’s regular collaborator editor/associate producer Ian Waugh (Leaves).

A Cuillin Rising was developed and commissioned through DigiCult’s Scottish Digital Shorts programme 2009-10, with production investment from Creative Scotland, UK Film Council and BBC Scotland.

Catriona is currently developing her first feature script.

For clips and more information, please visit the film’s website.

The PORTOBELLO FILM FESTIVAL opens next weekend in London with 6 DigiCult productions featuring in one of the UK’s premiere showcases for new and emerging talent. Scour the extensive festival programme and amongst the latest Italian, Irish, Spanish and Caribbean films, you’ll find some of our best films of the last three years:

Battenberg (Stewart Comrie)
Ever Here I Be (Kate Burton)
Fixing Luka (Jessica Ashman)
Labour (Michael Keillor)
Paris/Sexy (Ruth Paxton)
Rite (Michael Pearce)

If you are interested in watching some of the best shorts on the circuit, the festival runs from 1st to 18th September at the Portobello Pop Up Cinema and Westbourne Studios – all screenings are free – and special programmes include work by new London film makers and talks/Q&A’s with top directors.

Staged over three residential weekends in Glasgow, there will also be two public events with inspiring contributors from the world of film. Participants in the residency will take part in master classes with these speakers.

For more information visit the Playwrights’ Studio website. The screenwriting residency programme are supported by Creative Scotland’s Creative Futures programme.

Following two months of hard graft on their story, script and project ideas, Eva Riley and Tom Chick have been commissioned  by DigiCult and Creative Scotland to produce their first funded shorts with the company.

Eva’s naturalistic piece ‘Sweetheart’ tells the story of two sisters struggling with their inter-dependency and competing sexuality. And Tom’s lyrical re-telling of the traditional tale ‘Death In A Nut’ draws inspiration from the films of Bill Douglas, deftly exploring a son’s struggle with a stranger who comes to visit his ailing mother.

Congratulations to both these film-makers and commiserations to the remainder of the short film talent pool. Everyone worked hard throughout the development process: Ryan Adams, Antonia Bain, Hugh Farrell, Sam Firth, Neil Hepburn and Mark Rossi. DigiCult wishes you every success with your future film projects.

Alongside Zack Copping’s ‘Foxy and Marina‘ (in post production), ‘Sweetheart’ and ‘Death in A Nut’ complete DigiCult’s short film slate for 2011.

From personal experience, Branchage does deliver on its hype: a young, ambitious and imaginative film festival combining cutting-edge commissions and creative programming with all that’s charming about Jersey. The festival specialises in site-specific live sound-tracking, music and film screenings, matching each to a complementary and unusual venue on the island.

If you can make the trip to the island, you will be rewarded in style.