Film Independent's LA Film Festival kicks off next week -- Trailers on line to watch now!

Film Independent's LA Film Festival kicks off next week -- Trailers on line to watch now!

Film Independent's LA Film Festival

Here are some recommended links for Welsh Independent filmmakers, and for Indie producers in Ireland and Britain:

Film Independent used to be IFP/LA, and continues to host the Spirit Awards and other former IFP events:

Film Independent's LA Film Festival

Independent Feature Project (IFP) is one of North America's largest coalitions of Indie producers

Independent.com is the online magazine for Indie producers worldwide

TAC = Teledwyr Annibynnol Cymru/Welsh Independent Producers

UK Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television

European Film Academy

Academi Sgrin Cymru Skillset / Skillset Screen Academy Wales (SSAW)

Miami Underground Film Festival

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

My favorite book on American Independent Film is Celluloid Mavericks: A History of American Independent Film by Greg Merritt.



Gyda bob hwyl i bawb, Mark

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh-American Family Genealogy, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

© 2007 Mark Leslie Woods

American film scholar Launches Welsh Film, Music, and Book Review Symposium

Celtic Cult Cinema Blog expands to new Welsh Film Symposium site:

Mark Woods says:

"Croeso i drafodaeth 'da fi ar y we, gyda newyddion cerddoriaeth, ffilmiau, barddoniaeth, ffuglen, dramau, a storiau byr y Gymru."

"Welcome to my online symposium, your one source for news and reviews about new and old, Welsh Music, Film, Poetry, Fiction, Dramas, and Short Stories."

In June 2007 I completed my Ph.D. in Film Studies at the University of Glamorgan in Wales, and for the past five years I have watched and reviewed over 100 Welsh films and television products, as part of my research.

While there is extensive research in the field of Welsh national cinema by Berry, Blandford, Ffrancon and others, there is also a paucity of qualified scholarship in important areas of this field.

Welsh national cinema is a national cinema, which has struggled to survive, has struggled to overcome systemic and historic obstacles to scholarship, as well as funding, production, exhibition and distribution of its products, related organizations, agents and services.

Consequently, the National cinema of Wales will only benefit from further scholarship, and the implied enhancement of exposure to new and different audiences, from both and industrial and cultural perspective.

Each month I hope to share my findings and reviews with you, and I hope you'll tell me about your favorite films, as well!

Gyda bob hwyl i bawb,

Mark

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Welsh Music, Film, and Books Symposium, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

© 2007 Mark Leslie Woods

Glamorgan Student Film & Video Showcase at Chapter Arts Nos Iau nesaf -- Croeso i bawb!

End of Year Film and Video Showcase
June 14, 2007 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Chapter Art Centre, Cardiff

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries will be screening a series of Dramas and documentaries made by our Film and Video graduates in Screen one of the Chapter Arts Centre, Cardiff between 7pm and 9pm, on Thursday 14th June.

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

© 2007 Mark Leslie Woods

Fyfe Finishes Glamorgan Storytelling Season

Pictured above: George Ewart Evans (1909–88) was a pioneering oral historian. He published a series of books examining the disappearing customs and way of life of rural Suffolk, the best know of these is Ask the Fellows who Cut the Hay. He was also an accomplished story writer and wrote short-stories, novels and poems. George Ewart Evans was born and raised in the mining community of Abercynon, a stone’s throw from the University of Glamorgan where the George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling is based.

George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling / George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling

The George Ewart Evans Centre for Storytelling research seminar series for 2007 concludes on Thursday 14th June with a seminar from our very own Prof Hamish Fyfe. Please join us at 5pm in L201 for the seminar and a glass of wine.

Thurs 14th June 5 p.m. Prof Hamish Fyfe (University of Glamorgan)

“Habits of the Heart” Storytelling and Everyday Life

Academics have long been ambivalent about storytelling and other aspects of everyday life. As a notion ‘everyday life’ is vague, inclusive, and loaded with ambiguous cultural meaning as are the words ‘banal’ and, despite Raymond William’s heroic effort to rescue it, ‘ordinary’. Often linked to the bathetically comic or eternally tedious the everyday can also refer to the heroically democratic non-elitist and normal.

Storytelling is an everyday activity for most people in the world in some form or another. This paper will attempt to place storytelling in the quotidian of everyday life and to indicate how it has fallen through the gaps of concern that of the academic disciplines that look at everyday life through the refracting mirror of their own specific concerns. Is it possible to rescue storytelling from its position as a kind of remaindered subject that evades traditional divisions of knowledge?

Please Contact: Emily Underwood T: 01443 483312 E: efunderw@glam.ac.uk

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

© 2007 Mark Leslie Woods

GWYRTH: Cai Tomos, John Collingswood & Tom Raybould y Cwmni Dawns Diversions ar Llwyfan Heno

Double Bill: Monument + GWYRTH miracle

Fri 1 + Sat 2 June
8pm
Gwe 1 + Sad 2 Mehefin

Annie Pui Ling Lok: Monument

Monument provides a temporary landmark for London-based choreographer Annie Lok on a short tour around sites of personal, cultural and historical value. Souvenirs of particular places and occasions are revisited and represented through movement, attempting to recall and organize a non-chronological archive of memories.

Cai Tomos, John Collingswood & Tom Raybould: GWYRTH miracle

“I don’t know what it is that brings me back to life.”

A new collaboration between Cardiff-based choreographer and dancer Cai Tomos, visual artist John Collingswood and musician Tom Raybould. GWYRTH explores the moments in our lives when we are touched by the miraculous.

£10/£8/£6

Horizons 3 for 2 Ticket Offer :

Buy tickets to two events and get a free ticket to any performance at Chapter or Diversions Dance House (at Wales Millenium Centre). The Diversions programme features The Mark Bruce Company (Tue 29 May) and Dance Bristol (Mon 18 + Tue 19 June).

Call Chapter Box Office on 029 2030 4400 for full details.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

© 2007 Mark Leslie Woods

Wye's Worsted Wool Pulled Over Our Eyes: Welsh Woodstock, Washington's (newest) War, and Iraq Withdrawal (Dim gobaith caneri gyda Bush)

Sir Michael Rose said the Iraq war cannot be won . . .
[Pictured above: Sir Michael Rose live from Hay-on-Wye, Wales.]

Bore da i chi! This has all the makings of another great novel (or perhaps my next motion picture screenplay, if I can only beat Gore Vidal to the punch): Welsh Woodstock, Washington's (newest) War, and Iraq Withdrawal (Dim gobaith caneri gyda Bush!)

A British military leader is saying the war in Iraq is lost, and he's using the platform of the Mid Wales Hay Literary Festival (what Bill Clinton called the 'Woodstock of the Mind') as his bullypulpit.

Once again international attention is upon Wales, which raises the question, 'Is Wales the centre of the Universe, and does the River Wye mark the great divide that separates Washington from Baghdad?' (just kidding, well, sort of).

So in the Welsh 'court' we have a British warrior announcing the war is lost and that we need to withdraw (Dim gobaith caneri gyda Bush), while in Washington's moral wasteland we have Bush announcing the troops will stay for 50 years -- high drama & political intrigue? Shakespeare's King Lear comes to mind . . .

To read more please see 'Ex-Army chief seeks Iraq withdrawal':

Guardian Hay Festival

And for the REAL TRUTH about what Bush & Blair have planned in Iraq:

50 More Years in Iraq?
By Dan Froomkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Thursday, May 31, 2007; 12:52 PM

The White House, long irritated by the frequent use of Vietnam as a metaphor for Iraq, embraced its own analogy yesterday: South Korea.

There's an undeniable attraction to holding up America's military presence in South Korea as a model for Iraq: Our soldiers stationed there aren't dying in large numbers every month.

But in other ways, the analogy is troubling. And flawed. And dangerous. And telling.

It's troubling because American troops have been in South Korea for more than 50 years -- while polls show the American public wants them out of Iraq within a year.

It's flawed because in South Korea, unlike Iraq, there's something concrete to defend (the border with North Korea); and because Iraq, unlike South Korea, happens to be in a state of violent civil war.

Read 50 More Years in Iraq?

Read 50 More Years in Iraq?

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

© 2007 Mark Leslie Woods

Rumbles in the Dragon's Belly? Plagued by delays, Welsh Studio promises news coming soon

The start of building work on £330m film studio complex, dubbed Valleywood, has been plagued by repeated delays.

According to icWales:

Valleywood dream moves step closer to becoming reality
May 30 2007

by Abby Alford, South Wales Echo

ACTION could finally be called on the much-hyped £300m Valleywood film studio after years of delays.

The Echo understands a major announcement signalling a significant step forward will be made in the next couple of months.

A source close to Dragon International Studios, which is chaired by film-maker Sir Richard Attenborough, said the contract for building work on the £50m first stage of the project in Llanilid near Bridgend – five giant TV studios known as silent sound stages – is due to be awarded.

“We haven’t got a definite date for an announcement but the tenders for the work are in,” said the source.

Work is expected to start on site once the name of the firm that has won the contract is revealed. Today, Ogmore AM Janice Gregory, a long-time supporter of the studio project, said: “I am glad that things appear to be moving on and I am sure it will allay the fears of many people locally who were worried that things were a bit too quiet.”

Lord Attenborough publicly announced in July 2005 – after an earlier delay to hunt for rare dormice – that the complex on the vast 760-acre former opencast coal mining site would be completed by spring this year.

Cardiff School of Creative & Cultural Industries

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai Razing Ziggurats, on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Celtic Cult Cinema on the World Wide Web.

Click here to go directly to my personal blog page called Mordechai's Post-Evangelical-Granola on the World Wide Web.

© 2007 Mark Leslie Woods