Leeds International Film Festival

Leeds International Film Festival
Location Leeds, England
Language International
Official website

The Leeds International Film Festival (LIFF) is the largest film festival in England outside London. Held in November at various venues throughout Leeds, West Yorkshire it shows over 200 films from around the world, commercial and independent.

The festival office is in Leeds Town Hall, and the director of the festival is Chris Fell. Debbie Maturi is the director of the Leeds Young People's Film Festival (LYPFF) (formerly Leeds Children & Young People's Film Festival (LCYPFF)), another successful event which had its 9th year in March/April 2008.

Each year, beginning in 2001, the festival has played host to the Night of the Dead, an all-night horror-thon beginning at midnight, usually on the second Saturday of November.

LIFF has shown premieres of big blockbuster movies like The Butterfly Effect, Finding Nemo, Finding Neverland, Baghban to name but a few.

Contents

2010 festival

The 24th Leeds International Film Festival took place from the 4–21 November 2010, with some tickets on sale from April.

It featured 5 sections:

Awards

Award Film Director
Audience Award[1] High on Hope Piers Sanderson
Audience Award for Feature Film[1] The King's Speech Tom Hooper
Audience Award for Archive Film[1] Elling (2002) Petter Næss
Golden Owl Award[2] Tuesday, After Christmas Radu Muntean
Golden Owl Special Mention[2] Sweet Little Lies (Suto ritoru raizu) Hitoshi Yazaki
Méliès d'Argent Feature Winner[3] The Last Employee (Der Letzte Angestellte) (Germany) Alexander Adolph
Méliès d'Or Short Nomination[3] Yuri Lennon's Landing on Alpha 46 (Germany/Switzerland) Anthony Vouardoux
Short Film World Animation Award[4] Angry Man Anita Killi
International Short Film Competition Winner[4] Deeper Than Yesterday Ariel Kleiman
Yorkshire Short Film Competition Winner[4] The Astronomer's Son Simon Cartwright, Jessica Cope
Best of British Short Film Competition Winner[4] The Birdman of Tamworth Alastair Uhlig

2009 festival

The 23rd festival took place from the 4 November 2009 - 22 November 2009, showing a huge range of films from all over the world, including Men Who Stare at Goats, the Coen Brother's A Serious Man, Bright Star and Bunny and the Bull.

Audience Award

Miyazaki's latest stunning anime, Ponyo, has won the audience award for the Leeds International Film Festival 09. Described as wonderful, funny and charming by LIFF audiences, Ponyo was among a range of other high quality animation including the captivating Summer Wars, and haunting Angel's Egg, as part of the Fanomenon section which celebrates genre films including anime, horror, sci fi and action.

Golden Owl Competition

The jury awarded the Golden Owl Award to La Pivellina, directed by Tizza Covi and Rainer Frimmel. They were moved by the honesty, humanity and detail of the film. It is a delicate lesson in the fundamentals of life. The jury was also impressed by its organic and assured qualities which manage to mix documentary and fiction in a seamless, fluid style. A special mention went to Puccini and the Girl for being a beautiful piece of cinema.

Silver Méliès winning feature

Philip Ridley's Heartless stood out among the competition for its deft blending of fantasy and reality, its assured handling of a great many disparate genre elements – horror, urban drama, comedy and more besides – and the way it presented these familiar elements in a way that seemed both new and vital. It is an earnest film, one that bravely wears its heart on its sleeve throughout key plot points and character development, where in the hands of a different director and cast the emotional impact of this material could very easily have fallen flat. Visually captivating, wonderfully scripted and acted with a tremendous lead performance from Jim Sturgess, whether taken purely as entertainment or as an artistic statement it succeeds masterfully in every respect and for this reason it is a pleasure to award Heartless the 2009 Leeds International Film Festival Silver Méliès.

Silver Méliès special mention

The Decaillon Brothers' Sodium Babies also stood out for its visual invention and daring appropriation of a huge variety of influences, taking what was on some level familiar about the vampire mythos and turning it into something genuinely distinctive, eye-catching, spirited and fresh. While not as fully developed as it could have been, the directors deserve to move on to bigger and better things, and for this reason Sodium Babies receives a special commendation.

Short Film Prizes

International Jury 2009

Philip Ilson, UK, Media event programmer and Director of London Short Film Festival (Chair) Lina Paulsen, Germany, Programme Manager for the Hamburg International Short Film Festival Ciprian Alexandrescu, Romania, Filmmaker, Producer and Director of the Iasi International Film Festival

International Award Winners 2009

Grand Jury Prize, Best International Short Winning film: 10 min, directed by Jorge Léon, Belgium A simple but powerful story told with minimal resources but which had a resonance that will stay with the jury for a long time.

Best International Fiction Short

Winning film: Nunta Lui Oli ("Oli’s wedding"), directed by Tudor Jurgiu, Romania For the director’s sensitive approach to the story, built with minimal resources. The dramatic situation is very powerful, it really captures the sensation of both love and growing apart at the same time. A beautiful representation of acting that help us to relate with the characters in a bitter/humorous key.

Best International Animation Short

Winning film: Slavar (Slaves), directed by Hannah Hellborn & David Aronowitsch, Sweden A stunning example of the animated documentary genre that here educates and moved the jury with its horrific personal stories which ultimately lead to a life affirming conclusion.

Special mention: Le Petit Dragon (The Little Dragon), directed by Bruno Collet, France / Sweden An inventive and hilarious short film that draws on kitsch culture and gives us a highly individual take on a great seventies icon: Bruce Lee!

Best International Experimental Short

Winning film: Muto, directed by the Blu Collective, Italy A gob-smacking jaw-dropping short film that rewards endless viewings and constantly asks: “how did they do that?”

Special mention: Laitue, directed by Nicholas Brooks, UK A beautiful hand-drawn film experiment which uses the blank spaces on the screen as well as simple line drawings to create a loose narrative.

Best International Documentary Short

Winning film: Farseh Chob ("The wooden carpet"), directed by Abdolraman Mirani, Iran A documentary which uses a simple and basic technique to portray the hard and painful aspects of tough physical work which is both funny and captivating to watch. Special mention: Red Sands, directed by David Proctor, UK A captivating documentary that portrays the problematic tradition of bullfighting, still so controversial and both beautiful and disturbing to watch.

National Augustin Awards 2009

National Jury 2009 Jim Foulger, Journalist, Documentary Filmmaker and critic Espen Jensen, Filmmaker and programmer coordinator for Hull International Short Film Festival Hilary Radman, Lecturer in Media at Leeds City College

Best British Short

Winning film: Believe, directed by Paul Wright Special Mention: Curtains, directed by Julian Barratt & Dan Jemmett Special Mention: Photograph of Jesus, directed by Laurie Hill

Best Yorkshire Short

Winning film: Five Miles Out, directed by Andrew Haigh Special Mention: Fanatic, directed by Paul Robinson

2008 festival

The 22nd festival was held from 4 November 2008 to 16 November 2008. It incorporated venues across the city, including The Hyde Park Picture House and Leeds Town Hall.

2007 festival

The 21st festival, held 7 November 2007 - 18 November 2007, had five sections: Official Selection, Fanomenon, Cinema Versa, Nexus and a Kazuo Hara Retrospective. Persepolis was shown at the Opening Gala.

Leeds young people's film festival

Leeds also incorporates the Leeds young people film festival. Leeds Young People’s Film Festival is the UK’s most interactive young people’s film event with annual audiences of 5,000. It screens films from around the world made both for and by young people, alongside moving-image related workshops and masterclasses.

References

  1. ^ a b c "High on Hope Wins Audience Award". Leeds International Film Festival. 2010-11-22. http://www.leedsfilm.com/news/high-hope-wins-audience-award/. Retrieved 2011-01-12. 
  2. ^ a b "Winner of the Golden Owl Award 2010 Announced". Leeds International Film Festival. 2010-11-15. http://www.leedsfilm.com/news/winner-golden-owl-award-2010-announced/. Retrieved 2011-01-12. 
  3. ^ a b "2010 Melies Competition Winners Announced". Leeds International Film Festival. 2010-11-16. http://www.leedsfilm.com/news/mlis-competition-winners-announced/. Retrieved 2011-01-12. 
  4. ^ a b c d "2010 Melies Competition Winners Announced". Leeds International Film Festival. 2010-11-18. http://www.leedsfilm.com/news/short-film-competition-winners-announced//. Retrieved 2011-01-12. 

External links