myfilmsblog.co.uk

New British Talent in Cannes - Rachel Robey

Most new filmmakers have to draw on their creative and practical energies to get their first short film made. But with the right attitude, it’s more than possible. However, many of them will tell you that making the transition from short to feature, or debut feature to second feature, is not so easy. So when they do achieve it and those films stand out, they deserve a bit of credit. That’s exactly why The International Critics’ Week at the Cannes Film Festival was conceived. Though not strictly part of the main festival, it’s the longest-running of all the associated events, having been founded in 1962 by the Union of French Film Critics. 

myfilms in The Guardian

Article here: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/film/2007/03/how_to_make_friends_outside_th.html

Copy of article - Danny Leigh - March 2, 2007 - The Guardian Film Blog
How to make friends outside the film mainstream

Here's to myfilms, the social networking website launching next month to promote non-Hollywood product. I can't wait to chat with people about the genius of Alex Cox - maybe you?

While indie/arthouse cinema has always claimed to have a greater degree of craft, humanity and visual invention than the average studio blockbuster, it has never claimed to be a way of making friends - until now. Myfilms.co.uk, a new "social networking website" devoted to non-mainstream film and set up by, among others, the Film Council, aims to ensure that fans of Apichatpong Weerasethakul can at last find someone to talk to of an evening.

In fact, despite my glibness, that actually is at least part of the point of the exercise, the site providing an arena for the trading of opinions, recommendations and, crucially, information as to what might be showing where and when. Domain pain aside, it should eventually all add up to an effective means of publicising the world's smaller and more challenging movies, currently a near-impossibility given the mainstream media's ever more exclusive fixation on Hollywood product.