SIX OF THE BEST: Alistair Parkhurst, CiFF Festival Director & Chairman

4th March 2014

Welcome to another edition of SIX OF THE BEST, the semi regular part of BRWC where we fire six questions at lovely people. This time, we talk to Alistair Parkhurst, Festival Director and Chairman of CiFF. Alistair is a film editor and award-winning comedy writer who set up Cardiff Independent Film Festival in August 2012. He is in overall charge of the festival and is the main point of contact.

Why do we need this Festival in Cardiff?

Well, since the old Cardiff Film Festival ended in 2006, there hasn’t been anything that has truly replaced it. We’ve had niche festivals and screening nights in Cardiff which are all excellent in their own right, but we wanted to bring people together for a whole weekend, and have a festival that’s open, honest and accessible. As filmmakers ourselves, we’ve been to some excellent festivals and some dreadful ones and we’ve tried to learn what to do and what not to do. Certainly our starting point was that our selection and judging procedures had to be completely transparent and above board and signed up to the UFFO Code of Conduct for film festivals.

The second reason is that Cardiff is now a major creative hub, not just with major productions like Dr Who, but there is a very lively indie filmmaking scene and a constant stream of talent coming out of the various film courses in South Wales.

The third reason is that it’s never been easier or cheaper to make a feature film, especially with the proliferation of DSLR cameras, and we felt the time was right for a celebration of new talent.

What do you think your favourite moments will be when the festival is over?

That’s hard to say – I think the Masterclass (Friday 4^th April, 11am-2pm) with John Giwa-Amu and Caradog James will be brilliant – we really got lucky there because their excellent film The Machine goes on release a couple of weeks before and if the reception it got at Raindance (it won best UK feature) is anything to go by, we may be losing them to Hollywood before too long. Anyone interested in filmmaking should head along to this.

I’m also very much looking forward to the Welsh premiere of Keri Collins’ first feature ‘Convenience’ (Sat 5^th April, 6pm start) – largely as I haven’t seen it myself yet! Keri’s been a mainstay of Cardiff filmmaking for as long as I can remember and it’s great to see him make this breakthrough. He’s an extremely popular guy around the local scene and we’re expecting a very big turnout for that. We’re lucky enough to have him and Ray Panthaki doing a Q & A afterwards.

As for the competition films, they are all excellent, but I’m really looking forward to screening The Extraordinary Tale Of The Times Table on Friday 4^th (6pm start)

How long did it take to realise, from the idea of a film festival to opening night? Talk me through it.

I started having mad and outlandish fantasies about putting on a film festival several years ago but couldn’t persuade anyone to help me out. It wasn’t til summer 2012 I managed to convince some friends and collaborators that it was going to be a worthwhile effort. We’ve been putting it together ever since.

Any plans for next year yet?!

Nothing concrete yet, but we’ve got a few ideas to attract even more features than we did this year. We wanted to make this first festival a manageable size before slowly expanding in the coming years.

What films would you love to see at CIFF?

Hard to say as we couldn’t have predicted any of the films we ended up picking. Certainly I hope to see more Welsh and British films being submitted next year and if we have a successful festival, I think that will happen.

Anything you want to get off your chest right now?!

Nothing really, other than to thank everyone who has worked so hard to help get us this far and also to Chapter and Porter’s for hosting our events. I look forward to a big turnout!

http://www.cardifffilmfest.org.uk

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