AV FESTIVAL 12: FILMS
Sun 4 March 2012 – Thu 29 March 2012

Our film programme ran throughout the Festival with five screenings each week, plus two special weekends with visiting guest filmmakers.

During the Opening Weekend we welcomed leading American filmmakers James Benning and Sharon Lockhart to introduce their work in person.

The Slow Cinema Weekend focused on the work of four filmmakers: Fred Kelemen, one of the boldest German filmmakers of the last twenty-years; Lav Diaz internationally celebrated as the ideological father of the New Philippine Cinema; Lisandro Alonso one of the most accomplished and original Argentine artists working today; and the distinctive UK filmmaker Ben Rivers.

The film programme featured the work of forty international filmmakers from 21 different countries. This included sixteen UK premieres and twenty regional premieres, with the majority rarely seen and undistributed.

Highlights included: the eight-hour screening of Lav Diaz’s Melancholia and discussions with the filmmaker at Star and Shadow Cinema; the UK premiere of James Benning’s new film Nightfall, plus the slow cinema panel discussion.

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