Over the course of this year, Film Hub South East are running a series of free training sessions to support our members in their work to grow audiences for independent film in the region.
For our next event, in collaboration with the Cambridge Film Festival, we are organising the Film Hub South East Film Festival Roundtable. Hosted as part of the festival’s Industry Day, this event will give festival organisers in the South East of England the opportunity to come together in person, hear from guest speakers, discuss current challenges and share knowledge and learnings with a view to developing more successful festivals.
The event will take place in Cambridge and will feature a variety of different sessions, from panel discussions to breakout conversations. It will include a session on Film Festival Marketing with speakers Jo Comino, Marketing Manager at Borderlines Film Festival, which has grown to be the UK’s largest rural film festival, and Yi Wang, Director of Queer East, which has quickly established its own identifiable brand having only launched in 2020.
Registration
Registrations for the Film Festival Roundtable are now open. The deadline for registrations is 12pm, Monday 16th October 2023.
The Film Festival Roundtable is for people who are part of the team at a film festival in the South East region (see map). This is a closed event, so registrants who do not currently represent a film festival will not be able to attend.
Is your film festival a Film Hub South East member? If not, it’s free and easy to join.
Bursary Support
We recognise that financial barriers may prevent some members from attending in-person training. If you would like to apply for additional support to attend (whether towards the cost of your travel, accommodation, childcare or something else) you may be eligible for a Film Hub South East bursary. Find out more.
Sessions
Marketing and Branding for Film Festivals
12pm - 1:30pm
There is an art to successfully marketing an event that only happens once per year. For this session, we invited two industry case studies to share their expertise. Jo Comino from Borderlines Film Festival will share their experience of marketing a film festival in a rural environment, and Yi Wang from Queer East will take us through their experience of establishing a strong brand for your film festival.
Film Festivals in the South East - Breakout Discussion
2:45pm - 4:15pm
Following on from the case studies, we invite all attendees to come together to discuss how they see the industry’s current state and what challenges they are facing. By having these conversations in an open environment, we hope that we can all draw from the experience in the room to resolve some of the issues. This session will be opened by Holly Tarquini (F-Rating Founder), who will provide a provocation to initiate the conversation.
CFF's Annual State of the Industry Panel
4:55pm - 6pm
Cambridge Film Festival’s annual industry panel brings together professionals from across the sector to discuss the rapidly changing landscape of the film industry. Moderated by film critic and CFF Programmer Amon Warmann, the panel will discuss what has been a challenging year of SAG-AFTRA strikes in the USA, the effect of AI, the changing face of film criticism, and film festivals’ evolving role. We are pleased to welcome to the panel, International film critic and programmer Savina Petkova, producer and writer Helen Simmons and film festival consultant Wendy Mitchell.
Speakers
Jo Comino
Marketing Manager, Borderlines Film Festival
Jo has been the Marketing Manager of Borderlines (the UK’s largest rural film festival) since 2009. She has had many and varied film-related jobs: running the London Film-makers’ Co-op Cinema, writing and reviewing for City Limits, The Guardian and Sight & Sound, teaching, directing a documentary on Super 8 film-making for C4, as a researcher on Derek Jarman’s The Last of England. She is a Flicks in the Sticks promoter, showing monthly films at her local community centre in Herefordshire.
Yi Wang
Director, Queer East Festival
Yi Wang is the Founder, Director and Programmer of Queer East, a London-based festival that showcases boundary-pushing LGBTQ+ cinema, live arts, and moving image work from East and Southeast Asia and its diaspora communities, exploring notions of what it means to be queer and Asian today. He also works as a cultural and creative producer in performing arts with primary interests in marginalised voices and intercultural productions. Yi Wang has been a jury member for festivals such as Iris Prize, MIX Copenhagen, and Taiwan Women Make Waves Film Festival and has delivered occasional lectures and panels about festival programming and queer cinema for various institutions and festivals.
Holly Tarquini
F-Rating Founder, FilmBath & Media Consultant
Holly Tarquini spent many years as a producer/director of documentaries and factual entertainment television programmes. For the last twelve years was FilmBath’s executive director where in 2014 she founded the F-Rating, a feminist film rating highlighting films directed and/or written by women and now used by more than 100 independent cinemas, film festivals and organisations including IMDb, Raindance and The Barbican.
FHSE Training 2023/24
Bringing Back Audiences
Thursday 22nd June, 10:30am - 12pm
The exhibition sector still trying to establish the long-term effects of the pandemic on the habits of cinema audiences in the UK. For this next training session, we will be joined by Oliver Mantell, The Audience Agency, who will be drawing on their recent audience analysis in combination with the latest data from the Cultural Participation Monitor, to help you identify some actions to bring audiences back.
Developing Children and Family Audiences
January 2024 (Final Date TBC)
More information on this session will be available soon.