Encounters Creative Director Mark Cosgrove on Short Film Selection
Mark Cosgrove is the Creative Director of Encounters International Film Festival and has worked in independent cultural film exhibition for the past 22 years. Here he gives an insight about what he considers makes a good short film, and the importance of festivals for emerging filmmakers.
I.D. by Sam Firth winner of DepicT! British Special Mention Award
“There are no hard and fast rules as to what makes a good short film. This is both the excitement and the problem! Excitement because anything is possible and for a curator/festival programmer good short films can come in all shapes and sizes; Problem because short filmmakers are eager to know the solution and of course make a good film and………..there is no answer!
As a matter of course, I watch somewhere in the region of 4 – 500 short films – out of the staggering 1500 plus submissions that the festival receives each year – in preparation for our short film festival Encounters and Watershed’s 90 second filmmaking competition DepicT!.
What is interesting in this process is that the very bad films and the very good films stand out. There is a whole raft in the middle which cause me trouble because I’m uncertain; and that uncertainty is what makes them interesting. As I write this, I think back to the early days when I was selecting for Encounters. I started watching a short and thought this is bad, just not working, but something held my attention – I still don’t know what that was, maybe an image, a phrase, a feeling – and it turned out to be one of my favourite films of the festival.
What I want from a film is to feel a conviction – a conviction from the filmmaker that they have a confidence – or maybe attitude is a better word – in relation to the image, the sound, the dialogue.
This does not mean it has to be the most eloquently crafted or written. I have seen short films where the director is simply saying “look, I can direct actors in a scene or where they are speaking dialogue and it is reverse cut” but for me there has been a major thing missing – no emotion, no feeling, no passion.
The strength of short films is that filmmakers can experiment. There are usually less constraint in the short film world. With feature films comes the need for more money and with more money comes more constraints and compromise. In the short film world, I see riches of experimentation, not only formally but filmmakers trying out stories. One of the finest films from last year was from a Polish director telling of human trafficking from china to Poland. This is not a story that will easily make its way into the feature film world. The rough diamond is maybe a cliché but for me it is what I am searching for when going through the 4 – 500 short films – new talent, new voices, new visions
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Princess Margaret Boulevard by Winner of the International Jury Award at Encounters 2009
But let’s get back to hard facts: festivals only have a limited amount of space in their programme and every festival gets submitted way more films than they have space. Festival programmers get to be in a bit of a luxurious position! I always say to filmmakers if their film does not get selected, it is not necessarily because it is bad. Festivals and festival programmers have tastes, personalities and finite space. It is worth researching the many festivals around the world and getting a sense of what they are looking for.
My other piece of advice is to attend as many festivals as you can – even if your film did not get accepted. The film and media business is about networking and festivals, if they are worth their weight, are important places to network. The industry needs to renew itself and find out where the new talent is coming from.
Short film festivals in particular have an important function to platform and promote that talent. It’s by being there that things happen."
Follow Mark @EncountersSFF on Twitter to hear his regular updates on how the selection process is going.
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