Number 5 is Alive for Hull Film Festival

The 5th Hull International Short Film Festival will take place at venues around the city from 27 September – 1 October 2006. During my time at Shooters I was lucky enough to spend a few days in the city at then-director Catherine Litchfield's invitation. There was fantastic veggie food at a place called Hitchcocks, some great shorts, experimental open mic style screenings and the chance to hang with the Austrian Virgil Widrich, who made masterpiece shorts Fast Film and Copyshop. Coupled with the bachinale of the legendary TAZ-like Hut Street parties and being on the festival's expense account I could only conclude that this was the best small film festival I'd been to, and have been raving about the city ever since. Anyway, the programme includes...

The Open Road: The Films of Friese-Greene with live piano accompaniment;

a 50th anniversary programme of films from the great British Free Cinema movement;

Locality programme Made in Yorkshire; treats from the Yorkshire Film Archive showing Hull from the fishing industry to Hull Fair;

Special Atlas programmes focusing on films from Hull's twin city Freetown in Sierra Leone and a programme of German film;

Channel 4 Four Docs presentation of methods of alternative short film distribution and a screening of a selection of 4 minute documentaries;

Artists' film and video programmes Crossing Boundaries including a retrospective of celebrated Edinburgh based short-filmmaker Matt Hulse;

Sign Language Cinema programme focusing on issues of deafness with BSL interpreted introduction;

outdoor Big Shot screenings on the BBC Big Screen including children's short film and animation; filmmaking workshops and discussions, festival films award ceremony;

TRAILERS, which sees five shipping containers situated around the City of Hull containing specially commissioned films for the festival and finally the Hull Film party and a special surprise closing event!