If I tried to tell the story of my connection to the film world, it would fill a book. Almost everything though would be on the side of an admirer of film, rather than a creator. So why am I here in the midst of the filmmakers, when I’m not one myself?
Maybe it’s partly because my dad was a projectionist who loved to take me to the movies on his day off. Maybe it’s because I misspent my undergraduate years pretending that every day was my dad’s day off. And half a dozen other maybes. The net result is that now I’m a member of a new film festival that wants to promote the work of emerging/student filmmakers: not just the ones in our own vicinity, but from all over the world.
Ambitious of us, right? Well, if you could look into the back corners of my basement, you’d eventually find an item that I got at an auction in the early 1980s. It’s a 16mm print of a film called Amblin. It’s very brittle now – not fit to run though a projector – and the colour has reduced itself to red, but it’s still one of my treasures. You see, it was the first 35mm film made by a 22-year-old named Steven Spielberg.
One of the ways you can boost your ambitions is to get your student filmmaker films in front of as many audiences as you can reach. It stands to reason that one of the best ways of achieving that is to get those films entered in festivals everywhere. Maybe you’re well on your way to your own Amblin. We at the Eye2Eye International Film Festival want to help you on that journey.
Please, take the time to check our website at https://www.filmaccessnorthumberland.com/awards .The site is now open to accept submissions. The deadline for submission is April 14, 2023, and the Festival takes place on June 2, 3 & 4, 2023.
BTW, you’ll find Amblin on You Tube. Take a look at it and stoke the fires of your own ambition.
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