16 shorts get BFI/Lighthouse backing in £800,000 initiative

The BFI and Lighthouse today announced the 16 shorts to receive production funding through BFI Shorts 2012, the BFI’s one year scheme to support emerging UK filmmakers.

Lighthouse and the BFI provided a development period to hone a number of the projects before selecting the final 16 films from a longlist reduced from 1000 applications.

With budgets up to £50,000 each, the combined production budget for the scheme is up to £800,000 — all from the BFI Film Fund. The completed films are due to be delivered in 2013.

Successful applicants include BAFTA winner Adrian McDowall, BAFTA Scotland Animation winner and Screen International 2012 Star of Tomorrow Jamie Stone, and BAFTA Cymru winner Chris Forster, who will direct his brother Ewan Forster’s script.

Filmmakers include BAFTA nominees: Alex Winckler, 2011 Star of Tomorrow Michael Pearce, Faye Gilbert, Corinna Faith whose new film will be produced by feature producer Laura Hastings-Smith (Hunger), and Jonathan van Tulleken who will collaborate with Edinburgh Comedy Winner Tim Key.

Film critic Jonathan Romney will direct his third short, and other selected filmmakers include Stephen Fingleton, Karan Kandhari, Jane Linfoot, Stephen Leslie, Michael Keillor, Screen 2012 Star of Tomorrow Mustapha Kseibati, and Eva Weber who makes the transition to drama with her new short set in Eastern Europe.

Emily Kyriakides, programme producer at Lighthouse, is working in partnership Neon Films’ Nicky Bentham and producer Becca Ellson, to oversee the executive production of the films.

The 16 selected BFI Shorts and filmmaking teams are:

Anthony

Black Comedy

Christmas Eve. An enormous explosion tears through Lapland. Santa and his Elf, Anthony, have crash-landed in the middle of nowhere on their busiest night.

Writer/Director: Jonathan Van Tulleken

Producers: Dan McCulloch and Camille Gatin

Field Study

Drama

A story about the latent poisons in power, knowledge and innocence. A young, shy student on a field trip to post-communist Poland very abruptly comes of age when he makes the choice to withhold a truth.

Director: Eva Weber

Writer: Line Langbek

Producer: Claire Neate James

Gutpunch

Comedy

After discovering that his biological father could be any one of the desperados from a 1980s video-dating tape, 15-year-old Adam embarks on a suburban quest to find the man he can now call ‘Dad’.

Director: Adrian McDowall

Writer: Andrew Yerlett

Producer: Michelle Eastwood

Keeping Up With The Joneses

Black Comedy

MP’s wife Celia discovers her husband’s true colours when she is taken hostage by his criminal business associates, but both her and her kidnapper also end up learning a thing or two about themselves.

Director: Michael Pearce

Writer: Selina Lim

Producer: Megan Stuart-Wallace

L’Assenza

Drama

A man becomes obsessed by the sight of his own double in an Italian film from the early 1960s.

Writer/Director: Jonathan Romney

Producer: Carey Born

Liam + Lenka

Thriller

On the run and in trouble, a desperate young criminal falls for a bored Polish waitress in a remote highland hotel.

Writer/Director: Michael Keillor

Producer: Ally Gipps

Mohammed

Comedy Drama

12-year-old Adam finds his 31-year old, wrestling obsessed brother with learning difficulties a nightmare - until he sees a chance to use him to gain friends.

Writer/Director: Mustapha Kseibati

Producer: Michael Berliner

Orbit Ever After

Sci-fi Romance

The distant future. Two star-crossed lovers overcome all probabilities sacrificing everything they have in order to spend one perfect moment together.

Writer/Director: Jamie Stone

Producers: Chee-Lan Chan and Kurban Kassam

Sea View

Drama

A contemporary portrait of a teenage girl trying to navigate her way through the trials and tribulations of a brief encounter with an older man.

Writer/Director: Jane Linfoot

Producer: Anna Duffield

Sidney

Comedy Drama

A melancholy comedy about a burnt out French builder reduced to handyman work in a backpackers’ hostel, an Indian exchange student turning thirty, and a teenage girl just looking for a beer at the end of a long night.

Writer/Director: Karan Kandhari

Producer: Rebecca Wolff

SLR

Thriller Drama

A middle-aged divorced father obsessed with ‘voyeur pornography’ discovers someone is taking pictures of his teenage daughter. Unable to tell her the truth or go to the police, he must find the snapper himself and stop him.

Writer/Director: Stephen Fingleton

Producer: Matt Wilkinson

The Beast

Thriller Drama

A girl is captivated by the romantic myth of a beast on a moor - but a real beast is closer than she realised.

Writer/Director: Corinna Faith

Producer: Laura Hastings-Smith

The Line

Thriller Drama

A teenage girl and young boy run for their lives to cross ‘The Line’, but are they running away from danger or towards it?

Writer/Director: Faye Gilbert

Producer: Yaw Basoah

The Portrait

Drama

When a young art student paints a portrait of her ageing grandfather, her mother is forced to confront a past she had been trying to forget.

Director: Chris Forster

Writer: Ewan Forster

Producers: Clive Myer and Lynda Myer-Bennett

Co-Producer: Katie Holly

Tits

Comedy Drama

Despite assurances that his condition is common and will pass; thirteen year old Sam is horrified to find he has grown a pair of breasts. His terror intensifies when the resident school bully sets in motion a tense game of cat and mouse, as he subtly threatens to expose Sam to the school; building inexorably towards a confrontation that neither of them could ever have imagined…

Director: Alex Winckler

Writer: Duncan Barrett

Producer: Patrick Howson

Co-Producer: Lauren Dark

To Leech

Comedy Drama

A black comedy about two men trying to resolve an argument in a rather unusual, anachronistic fashion. They meet on a field at dawn to fight a duel.

Writer/Director: Stephen Leslie

Producer: Seb Loden