FIRST BLACK & ASIAN FILM FESTIVAL IN BRISTOL

(Thu 13 - Sun 16 Oct 2005)

Split Screen, Bristol’s first combined Black & Asian Film Festival, kicks off on Thursday 13 October 2005. Expect a stunning selection of international features, shorts and documentaries from Africa, the Caribbean and the fringes of Bollywood through to local shorts and archive footage from days gone by. The festival is a collaborative city wide effort between Arnolfini, BBC Bristol, British Empire & Commonwealth Museum, Kuumba, South West Screen and Watershed which aims to give greater prominence to black and Asian filmmaking in the South West and inspire local talent.

The film festival, forming part of Black History month, will take place at various Bristol venues including Arnolfini, Watershed and Timbuktu Club.

The Split Screen programme at Watershed will include highlights from the bfi's Mama Africa touring programme, which features some of the best of African female talent from Moussa Sene Absa’s acclaimed feminist melodrama Madame Brouette to award-winning shorts such as Jacqueline Kalimunda’s Histoire de tresses (About Braids). Watershed will also play host to a screening of One Love directed by regular collaborators Rick Elgood (Dancehall Queen) and the legendary Don Letts (The Clash: Westway to the World), which started life as a musical stage show in Bristol.

Arnolfini will feature the latest and best films from Asia’s most recent wave of filmmaking talent. Michael Smith and Vishal Rawlley’s Asian Vibes Bombay and Asian Vibes London (India/France) explore the new musical sounds of India in unique documentaries that combine underground video aesthetics, archival Bollywood clips and an exploratory documentary approach. The festival will screen The Rising, the latest film from acclaimed director Ketan Mehta which charts the epic tale of Mangel Padney and India’s historic 1857 military uprising against Imperial rule, with Bollywood star Aamir Khan in the role of the fearless leader of the Indian rebellion.

There'll also be a chance to attend free hands-on film workshops, masterclasses, seminars, and meet the movers and shakers in the business.

The festival will open with Screen Shift - a showing of short films by highly regarded local Afro Caribbean artists, funded by South West Screen and Kuumba. This showcase of vibrant and compelling work is part of a positive drive to promote local artists and nurture their filmmaking talent. A number of BBC productions from BBC Bristol and the BBC Asian Programmes Unit will also be screened showcasing the very best of black and Asian talent within the BBC.

British Empire and Commonwealth Museum, BBC Bristol and Watershed are supporting a unique project called Empire Re-presented. The aim of the project is to work with four local artists to compose a music score and write a piece of poetry for two films to be created using archive footage from India and Africa. This will be shown in the main foyer at Watershed for the duration of the festival.

Carlton Romaine, Forum Officer at Kuumba said, “We have an excellent partnership, which is now supporting a real positive drive to bring black and Asian film work to prominence. I look forwarded to Split Screen becoming a major part of Bristol’s exciting festival & cultural calendar scene”.

Caroline Norbury, Chief Executive at South West Screen said, “Split Screen is a hugely exciting festival and forms part our aim to make diverse, distinctive and dynamic films available for all communities in the South West. We created the Screen Shift part of the festival to enable local Afrikan Caribbean artists the chance to develop films that could be viewed by a large audience.”

Maddy Probst, Exhibition Co-ordinator at Watershed says: “We’re really pleased to be part of this city wide programme of Black & Asian screenings and workshops. We’re particularly excited about showcasing filmmaking talent emerging from the South West alongside international work such as the bfi’s Mama Africa tour which features some of the best of African female talent behind and in front of the camera.”

Maithreyi Nandakumar, Media Education Officer at the British Empire and Commonwealth Musuem said, “This is a brilliant opportunity for local artists to access the Empire museum’s extensive archive of over 800 hours of film footage”.