Welcome to WordPress. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start writing!
-
-
FESTIVAL UPDATE – The Portrait:
– BAFTA Cymru Award Best Short Film, official selection
– Edmonton Film Festival, official selection
– Palm Springs Short Film Festival, official selection
– The Newport Beach Film Festival California, official selection
– The Belfast Film Festival, official selection
– Edmonton International Film Festival, official selection
– San Diego Jewish Film Festival, official selection
– Be Film New York Underground Film Festival, official selection
– Motovun Film Festival, official selection
– The Directors UK Festival
Chris Forster, the Director of The Portrait, receiving the BAFTA Cymru Award. Produced by Clive Myer, Lynda Myer-Bennett and Katie Holly, The Portrait is a short and powerful drama by the film making partnership of Chris and Ewan Forster (director and writer respectively). When a young art student paints a portrait of her ageing grandfather, her mother is forced to confront a past she had been trying to forget. A co-production between Eclectic Films and Blinder Films (Ireland).
The nineteen minute film ‘The Portrait’, has been written by Ewan Forster and directed by his brother Chris Forster. The film examines some complex dilemmas within three generations of one family. Through the painting of a portrait we are asked to consider: Is it ever better not to know some things than to know them? Does secrecy protect or damage those we love? Can all things be forgiven and forgotten?
The films stars Joss Ackland, Juliet Stevenson, Charlotte Richie, Neil Pearson and Max Lewis.
The Portrait Story
Art student Eva Burrell chooses her grandfather, German emigre Henry Winter, as the subject of a portraiture assignment in the final year of her degree. Her mother, Laura, finds it hard to disguise her reticence about the decision because Eva and her teenage brother Tom, who has Down syndrome, are unaware of the exact details of their grandfather’s wartime past. Ninety one year old Henry, who lives alone in a suburban bungalow and is only used to the regular company of his care worker, Barbara, is thrilled at the new found interest his grand daughter shows in him. As the portrait progresses over the weeks and Eva’s relationship with her grandfather develops, her attempts at re-accommodating him into family life push Laura further into a dilemma that’s plagued her ever since adolescence when her mother confided in her the nature of her father’s association with the T4 Euthanasia Programme at the Psychiatric Hospital at Hadamar in Germany between 1941 and 1945. At a meal to celebrate her birthday, to which Eva has invited Henry, Laura watches with a profound envy at the good-natured informality of her children and her close friend Roger in the company of her father. Should she tell her children or allow them to live their lives without the burden of knowledge that she feels has coloured so many aspects of her adult life. Forced into a corner by her daughter’s persistent questioning Laura decides it’s time to finally confront her father with what she knows; a decision that will lead to Henry’s death – neither murder nor suicide but a tragic ritual of retribution by consent. Seemingly liberated from a life of denial Laura celebrates the news that Eva’s painting of her grandfather has secured her a place at a prestigious London Art School.
The painting of the portrait itself is a crucial part of the films unfolding narrative and we commissioned portrait painter Bee Griffith to paint it.
Here is another example of her powerful work:
-
Maurice El Medioni: The Birth of PianOriental
“Jews and Arabs share the same musical story. We, the Moors, Arabs and Jews were kicked out of Spain in 1492 and in our baggage was the same music.”
About the film (to view synopsis click here)
Festival Awards:
– Best Sound Design, Budapest Film Festival!
- – Best Music in a Feature Documentary’ Global Nonviolent Film Festival, Canada
- – Best Film/Sound Editing Semi-Finalist, Filmhaus, Berlin
- – Best Featurette, Wallachia International Film Festival, Bucharest
- – nominated Best Original Score, Prague Indiemania Film Awards
- – nominated Best Sound Design, Film Revolution Festival, Montreal, Canada
- – nominated Best Film Sound, Nocturna Film festival, Brooklyn, USA
- – nominated Best Original Score, Faro Concurso de Cinema Mediterraneo e Mudial, Portugal
- – selected Keyframe International Film Festival, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- – Finalist Best Short Documentary, Oaxaca Filmfest, Mexico
- – selected Comfest Global Community Film fstival, Toronto, Canada
-
Derek Jarman’s producer James Mackay called The Orchard “An innovative and daring approach to directing screen acting, placing The Orchard on the world stage of new approaches to film”.
Gideon Koppel, director of ‘Sleep Furiously’ said “Within The Orchard there is an intimacy and truth to the emotional space which is really impressive. The camera[s] seem very much within the drama rather than simply recording it. They are at once – albeit anonymous – characters within the story.”
FESTIVAL UPDATE – The Orchard:
– Winner of the Van Gogh Award for Best Feature Film,- Amsterdam Film Festival Screenplay Competition
– Winner of The Yosemite International Film Festival Award for Best Foreign Feature
– An Award Winning Film of the Indie Film Festival, Hudson, Ohio
– Trenton Film Festival, New Jersey, USA, official selection
– Cambridge Film Festival UK, official selelction
– UnderCannes, Cannes Underground Film Festival, official selection
– Mongolia International Film Festival, official selection
– Cutting Edge Film festival, official selectionSix actors are brought together in a country house to put on an improvised version of The Cherry Orchard. As the old friends joyfully reunite all bodes well. But as they cast themselves in the play cracks begin to appear. They discuss the themes of the play which gradually begin to take over both the actors and their characters. What starts as an amusing weekend turns into a self-doubting and destructive scenario. Will they ever be able to be friends again?
The Orchard takes its narrative form from the four-act structure of Anton Chekhov’s ‘The Cherry Orchard’. Its underlying dramatic driver is Pirandello’s ‘Six Characters in Search of an Author’. The Orchard uses the collision of these two great plays to draw out and exploit the emotions, symbolisms and resonances that take the actors on a journey from friendship to derision and contempt. From Chekhov it takes its emotive themes and from Pirandello its playful deconstruction.
Filmed in real time over one weekend, starring Lucy Black, Paul Currier, Daisy Douglas, Dorothea Myer-Bennett, Richard Neale and Dan Winter. An original musical score by Towering Inferno’s composer Andy Saunders is used to further emphasise the actors’ moments of deep introspection.
The Arrival
The Feast
The Party
The Departure
-
All things buried will resurface
Ten years ago, a perfectly preserved body is discovered by a young boy
playing on a remote mire.- Festival Awards
- – Best Narrative Feature, 4th Dimension Independent Film Festival, Bali
- – Best Original Story, Budapest Film Festival
- – Best Drama Semi-Finalist, FARO Concurso de Cinema Mediterraneo e Mudial, Portugal
- – Best Narrative Feature Semi-finalist, CLIMAX Festival Internacional de Cinema Independiente, Madrid
- – Best Drama Semi-finalist, Film Revolution Festival, Montreal, Canada
- – Best Low Budget Feature Semi-Finalist, Filmhaus, Berlin
- – nominated Best International Feature Film, Swedish International Film Festival
- – nominated Best Narrative Feature, Beyond the Curve International Film Festival, Paris
- – Award winner Wallachia International Film Festival, Bucharest
MAIN CAST
- The Professor – John Mackay
- His Daughter – Gemma Lawrence
- His Lover – Dorothea Myer-Bennett
- Her Husband – Piers Hampton
- The Security Guard – Perry Jaques
A Film by Lynda Myer-Bennett & Clive Myer
1 hour 56 minutes
B & W (F Rated)UK 2019
For further information contact: info@eclecticfilms.com
Now, the life of the terminally ill archeology professor, who excavated the body
with his former student and lover, is thrown into turmoil when forced to reexhibit
this 2000-year-old find.