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Press release


  • 30 October 2007

Students’ tales of the city to be shown at SEE Festival


Scenes from student film The Wild Ones?

Scenes from student film The Wild Ones?

Films made by students at the University of Sussex will feature alongside work by established film-makers once again at this year's Brighton Documentary Festival, 'SEE'.

All four films tell tales inspired by the city of Brighton: Mods and Rockers 40 years on from the infamous Whitsun weekend battles; the history of the "dirty weekend"; the story of a sex worker's life in prostitution, and a dramatic investigation of one of the notorious Brighton Trunk Murders.

The films will be screened on Sunday November 18, the second day of the weekend-long festival, which this year is held at the Marlborough Theatre, Princes Street, Brighton. Each screening will be followed by a discussion session with established producers.

Lizzie Thyne, Senior Lecturer in media and film studies and a documentary maker, says: ""The See Festival is not only a great local opportunity for students to showcase their excellent work but also to meet established producers and get a feel for the contemporary documentary scene."

Leading names from the industry attending the festival include documentary makers with track records of television and cinematic work such as Daisy Asquith (Marrying A Stranger), Luke Holland (A Very English Village), Marc Isaacs (Philip and His Seven Wives), Marc Francis (Black Gold) and Jerry Rothwell (Modern Painters). Their work will be showcased in a series of screenings, along with workshops and talks.

The Festival also sees the launch of Real World, a £20,000 film scheme for short documentary film developed by University of Sussex-based Institute of Development Studies with Screen South (the UK Film Council's regional agency). The aim is to bring international research on social justice to a wider audience through the narrative power of documentary film.

The SEE Brighton Documentary Film Festival was founded in 2005 by local filmmaker David Notman-Watt, and is dedicated to documentary film-making. Documentaries have become an important part of the commercial film world in recent years, including cinematic successes such as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911, Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth and Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me.

Notes for editors

Student films featured at the SEE Festival on Sunday, 18 November, as follows (screening times in brackets):

  • Priceless: (Sun 18 Nov 2007, 8pm, as part of the Shooting People session, 6 mins). Charlie tells the story of life on the streets to running high-class brothels - and looks ahead to a life after prostitution.

Producers: Laura Bailey, Daisy Harvey, Laura Newbury, Lauren Simpson, BA Media Practice and Theory, year 2.

 

  • The Wild Ones? (Sun 18 Nov 2007, 10.15 am, 15 mins). The 'Whitsun weekend' fights between the Mods and Rockers in Brighton created a moral panic that ultimately saw the two youth cultures vilified by the media. More than 40 years on, eyewitnesses and historians reflect on the events of the mid-Sixties and what they think about the legacy created by the riots.

Producers: Jessica Ainley, Claire Chester, Jo Haslam, Matthew Homer, Video Documentary in Contemporary History, MA option.

 

  • Kiss Me Quick (Sun 18 Nov 2007, 10.15 am, 15 mins). A lively look at 'the dirty weekend' and its history. Through postcards, film clips and glimpses of gay life from the Sussex Mass Observation archive, this film asks - is the dirty weekend now just a marketing ploy in an age when anything goes? Recently screened at the London Raindance Festival.

Producers: Indira Maya Ganesh, Adriano James Majocchi, Mahmoud Muna and Stella Sims, Video Documentary in Contemporary History, MA option.

 

  • Brighton Summer of 1934 (Sun 18 Nov 2007, 8pm, as part of Shooting people session, 6 mins). The turbulent relationship of two lovers, Tony Mancini and Violette Kaye, 'The Girl with the Dancing Legs'. Suggestively evoking the seediness of 1930s Brighton, this is the tale of the one of the crimes popularly known as 'The Brighton Trunk Murders'.

Producers: Emma Davies, Tom Little, Matt Simpson, Peter Swinford, Lauren Tee, BA Media Practice and Theory, year 2.

 

  • For more information about tickets, screening times etc, visit www.seefestival.org or tel: 01273 227700.

 

  • For further details about the Real World project, contact Tessa Lewin on 01273 678 790.

 

University of Sussex Press office contacts: Maggie Clune or Jacqui Bealing. Tel: 01273 678 888 or email press@sussex.ac.uk

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