A note from the organisers
This is the very first festival and symposium organised by the newly formed International Network of Experimental Fiction Filmmaking (INEFF), which brings together practitioners, researchers, scholars, and industry professionals with a shared desire to innovate and experiment in fiction filmmaking. As filmmakers, we believe passionately in the relevance and value of experimental fiction filmmaking as a field of practice and academic enquiry, and we want this field to grow and engender a fruitful exchange of ideas, practices, and perspectives. Our mission is to help to define what experimental fiction filmmaking is and what it can become, whether that is on the level of storytelling, aesthetics, performance, production and presentation methods, or technology. We believe that critical discussion of practice can allow it to develop in new inspiring ways, and we want our event to stimulate such a discussion – breaking the boundaries between practice and theory.
Our inaugural festival attracted over 2700 film submissions from all around the world; the sheer number of filmmakers who feel their work falls within the category of experimental fiction filmmaking is amazing. The festival selection process allowed us to consider the possibilities of experimental fiction filmmaking through the incredible richness of ideas, approaches and creative explorations apparent in all the wonderful films we decided to shortlist for the festival. The festival line-up features 75 films from 39 countries, and these films undoubtedly represent the state of experimental fictional filmmaking in the world today.
Selecting films from the overwhelming number of submissions wasn’t easy, and we are eternally grateful to our festival jurors who helped us make meaningful choices for the festival: Dan Gould, Enrico Piffer, Prakhar Patidar, Roshni Bohra, Sam Pay, Dylan Fletcher, Yun Wong, Elizabeth Delahunt, Joseph Cammiss Low, Jonathan Thorley, Ashley O’Rourke, Owen Davey, Jon Oldham, Harry Bond, Israel Afolabi, Silvanos Mudzvona, Thomas Bain, Sebastian Simpson-Bandidin, Kamilla Khasanova, Jade Davis, Sarah Knoegtig, Joji Holness, Nikita Listopad and Jake Orton. Thank you all!
We very much hope you enjoy the event, and that you will keep in touch with the INEFF.
Pavel Prokopic, Matthew Hawkins and Alex Lichtenfels
Our inaugural festival attracted over 2700 film submissions from all around the world; the sheer number of filmmakers who feel their work falls within the category of experimental fiction filmmaking is amazing. The festival selection process allowed us to consider the possibilities of experimental fiction filmmaking through the incredible richness of ideas, approaches and creative explorations apparent in all the wonderful films we decided to shortlist for the festival. The festival line-up features 75 films from 39 countries, and these films undoubtedly represent the state of experimental fictional filmmaking in the world today.
Selecting films from the overwhelming number of submissions wasn’t easy, and we are eternally grateful to our festival jurors who helped us make meaningful choices for the festival: Dan Gould, Enrico Piffer, Prakhar Patidar, Roshni Bohra, Sam Pay, Dylan Fletcher, Yun Wong, Elizabeth Delahunt, Joseph Cammiss Low, Jonathan Thorley, Ashley O’Rourke, Owen Davey, Jon Oldham, Harry Bond, Israel Afolabi, Silvanos Mudzvona, Thomas Bain, Sebastian Simpson-Bandidin, Kamilla Khasanova, Jade Davis, Sarah Knoegtig, Joji Holness, Nikita Listopad and Jake Orton. Thank you all!
We very much hope you enjoy the event, and that you will keep in touch with the INEFF.
Pavel Prokopic, Matthew Hawkins and Alex Lichtenfels
INEFF Organisers
Pavel Prokopic
Pavel Prokopic is the INEFF principal investigator, as well as a filmmaker, researcher and lecturer in Film Production at the University of Salford. His current research focuses on advancing cinema as a unique form of art and storytelling by synthesising creative practice-as-research, philosophical concepts, and an innovative application of traditional methods and cutting-edge information and communication technologies, which is exemplified in the recent Nested Cinema installation. Previously, Pavel has written and directed several dramas and experimental projects, and worked as a freelance cinematographer in London. He also worked as a content director/producer on an IoT research project The Living Room of the Future with BBC R&D and the British Council, and has taken part in various artistic residencies and collaborations, including the Visual Research Network and the Sidney Nolan Trust. His work has been widely published, exhibited and presented, including FACT in Liverpool, Grosvenor Gallery in Manchester and Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He holds a PhD in Film from the AHRC North West Consortium/University of Salford, and a Master’s degree in Film Aesthetics from Magdalen College, University of Oxford. For more information, please visit pavelprokopic.com
Alex Lichtenfels
Alex Lichtenfels is Senior Lecturer at University of Salford. His filmmaking practices centre around notions of devised cinema, adapting and incorporating theatrical and performance traditions to a filmmaking context. His work invites collaborators from many disciplines, and the guiding principle behind it is to design and enact non-hierarchical filmmaking processes.
Matthew Hawkins
Matthew is a filmmaker and academic. His research interest in film practice is focused on affect and tone in narrative cinema, documentary film, and experimental practice. He holds a PhD from the University of East London, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This research project, entitled The Concept of Affective Tonality and the Role of the Senses in Producing a Cinematic Narrative, is focused on affective and mood, rooted in a Deleuzian film-philosophy, and how this can be used as a method and methodology for composing narrative fiction film that privileges the subjective experience of characters, rhythm, and tone, over traditional narrative structure. Matthew is Chair of the Screen Research Group and Course Director for Film Practice in the Division of Film at London South Bank University.
Pavel Prokopic is the INEFF principal investigator, as well as a filmmaker, researcher and lecturer in Film Production at the University of Salford. His current research focuses on advancing cinema as a unique form of art and storytelling by synthesising creative practice-as-research, philosophical concepts, and an innovative application of traditional methods and cutting-edge information and communication technologies, which is exemplified in the recent Nested Cinema installation. Previously, Pavel has written and directed several dramas and experimental projects, and worked as a freelance cinematographer in London. He also worked as a content director/producer on an IoT research project The Living Room of the Future with BBC R&D and the British Council, and has taken part in various artistic residencies and collaborations, including the Visual Research Network and the Sidney Nolan Trust. His work has been widely published, exhibited and presented, including FACT in Liverpool, Grosvenor Gallery in Manchester and Victoria & Albert Museum in London. He holds a PhD in Film from the AHRC North West Consortium/University of Salford, and a Master’s degree in Film Aesthetics from Magdalen College, University of Oxford. For more information, please visit pavelprokopic.com
Alex Lichtenfels
Alex Lichtenfels is Senior Lecturer at University of Salford. His filmmaking practices centre around notions of devised cinema, adapting and incorporating theatrical and performance traditions to a filmmaking context. His work invites collaborators from many disciplines, and the guiding principle behind it is to design and enact non-hierarchical filmmaking processes.
Matthew Hawkins
Matthew is a filmmaker and academic. His research interest in film practice is focused on affect and tone in narrative cinema, documentary film, and experimental practice. He holds a PhD from the University of East London, which was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. This research project, entitled The Concept of Affective Tonality and the Role of the Senses in Producing a Cinematic Narrative, is focused on affective and mood, rooted in a Deleuzian film-philosophy, and how this can be used as a method and methodology for composing narrative fiction film that privileges the subjective experience of characters, rhythm, and tone, over traditional narrative structure. Matthew is Chair of the Screen Research Group and Course Director for Film Practice in the Division of Film at London South Bank University.