What could you ask of a beautiful evening beyond good film and a diversity and intelligence of conversation? Yesterday Brightwide kicked off its first Refugee Week online film festival (you still have two weeks to watch all six Award-Winning films for £9.99 so click here!) during an event at BFI Southbank, organised in partnership with Refugee Action. Refugee Week is an effort to highlight the stories and struggles of millions of refugees around the world, and celebrate all that they bring to the UK, through film screenings, music festivals and art exhibitions.

From Casablanca to Calais: Exile on Celluloid kicked off in the BFI Delegates Centre, where a piece of paper handed to me upon entry forced me, very happily, to talk to strangers. I met people from Congo, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Italy…too many countries to list! I met refugees, film producers, employees in different positions at Refugee Action, documentary funders, students, and writers. Our friends Ash and Negar, the songwriters portrayed in No One Knows About Persian Cats where also there with us. The conversation flowed with the wine, and I’m still thinking about some of the things I learned.

I enjoyed myself, so I was almost sorry to go downstairs for the panel discussion but not for long. Channel 4’s Samira Ahmed did a brilliant job of moderating between short clips of various films; the sole woman there, she posed some very good questions about the films themselves and the larger questions they raise.

Director Stephen Frears (Dirty Pretty Things) wasn’t able at first to remember much about Dirty Pretty Things aside from Audrey Tatou, but one of the things that attracted him to the story was the depth of its characters, and how it explained the changing face of immigrants to the UK. Mat Whitecross (Moving to Mars, and a production assistant for In This World) was eloquent in relating his own family’s history of persecution in Argentina and flight, and the ethics involved in documentary making.

And Kenny Glenaan (Gas Attack) asked at the very end what I had really been waiting for, the deeper questions of why so many are being forced from their homes, what are the structural causes of such huge numbers of refugees? Of course the answers to that would require several additional panels.

All of us also loved a quote from an interview with Philip Lioret (Welcome), shown as one of the clips screened during the panel: “The film touches the heart first and then moves to the brain…when you involve the emotion first, and then engage the mind it (the film) has more impact”. This resonated so closely with how we choose the films we show here at Brightwide, and is why we made Welcome part of our online festival.

Upon leaving Paola De Leo of Brightwide, prompted us to fill out the Refugee Action campaign card, to ask the new government to keep its promises to end child detention, and to stop deporting gay and lesbian asylum seekers to countries that discriminate against them. And then we moved to the bar for a little more conversation, before heading home, minds full of new people and new ideas. A lovely evening and one we hope will be repeated next year.

Brightwide photographer:
Sarina G. McCavana www.sarinagascon.com
Demetrio Filocamo www.demetrio.it

I read on the International Herald Tribune this weekend about “the oil spills we don’t hear about” and more precisely what has been happening in Nigeria for the last 50 years.  After watching Oil Spill, the wonderful movie on the Exxon Valdez disaster, you can barely stand the daily news and updates on the BP oil spill – let alone the fact that it did happen again.  And yet, according to the IHT, “there is an Exxon Valdez happening every year for 50 years in Nigeria”.  ”Experts estimate that some 13 million barrels of oil have been spilt in the Niger Delta since oil exploration began in 1958″. Well – in spite of both Greenpeace and Amnesty reporting the spills, I am ashamed to say that I never heard of it.  And if it weren’t for the images of the movie playing in my mind constantly, I wonder whether I would have gazed at the article while scrolling the pages of the newspaper this past week end.  Am I the only one?

Livia Firth

An amazing tool has arrived on the Internet. You might have actually already heard about it: Find any film is a database that enables to find any film (as the title shows it up) in whatever format available: DVD, Theatrical, VOD, rent, own… We have made a try with a few films from our database and it works to perfection. The database is growing each day more and more so the service should reach a level of fiability unpreviously seen before soon. We already adopted it -so easy to use! Let us know if you already tried it and what you think below.

Luc Martinon

The London International Documentary Festival comes to a close after another successful year this weekend, and on Saturday May 8th at British Museum, Brightwide teams up with my old friend Riccardo Neri to present his powerful new documentary film H.O.T (or Human Organ Traffic). I can’t wait to see the movie on a big screen …

… and I’ll be interviewing Riccardo after the film, so we will publish it here … I have known Riccardo since we were in our late teens, and I can honestly say that the story of making this film (and some of the adventures he has encountered) are truly unbelievable. And it will be my first time as a moderator, so all support welcome! and if you do come along, post here to let me know how it went!

The film itself, H.O.T, “recounts one of the darker sides of globalisation, the international illegal organ trade, an uncomfortable truth that is both widespread and flourishing. H.O.T underscores one of the biggest disparities of the 21st century, where one part of the world becomes ever richer while sterile, and the other poorer but fertile”. It is also the first time that anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes, who in 1999 founded Organ Watch, the world’s largest association on the monitoring of the international organ trade, gives a powerful testimony on camera.

And f you can’t make it we’ll be sure to post the interview here on this blog, and then later in the year, we will screen the film in full on Brightwide.

Livia Firth x

Here we are Bright-friends with another eye-catching and surely ear-pleasing documentary!  What About Me, will be screened free of charge for your enjoyment on 5th March at 6.00 pm at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS).

So, students and non-students come and join us for this trip around the planet where music is used to explore the complexities of human nature and reveal how we are all connected through our creativity, beliefs and – mostly – through our madness. In the words of co-producer/director Jamie Catto, the film is a look at “how we are ego-driven, needy in relationships, insatiable in desire, addicted to status, wounded by childhood … but how we still manage to be inspired and creative”. Covering universal topics such as God, Sex, Death and Money, the film features contributions from the likes of Noam Chomsky, Will Young, Courtney Love, Stephen Fry, Tim Robbins, Billy Connolly, Michael Stipe and Baaba Maal. It’s all set against the backdrop of a mesmeric soundtrack where Alanis Morissette, KD Lang and Michael Franti along with Bedouin Musicians, Chinese rappers, Gabonese Pygmies and Tuvan throat singers are seamlessly mixed into each other.
If you are not attending the free SOAS screening, you can always watch the film on Brightwide.  Yes you have to pay a small fee (remember it is all about supporting independent cinema not about making us rich!) but believe us when we say: this is a movie that will change your life.  Or at least put a HUGE smile on your face!

For more info about the event go to our Facebook page  http://bit.ly/a2dSGf

On Seeing the Guardian’s recent coverage of the deep water oil platform (that burned for more than a day after an explosion) and that has sunk in the Gulf of Mexico: “The sinking of the Deepwater Horizon could release more than 1,135,600 litres of crude oil a day into the water” the article reads, we were put in mind of the excellent film Oil Spill: The Exxon Valdez Disaster, and couldn’t help but be staggered that this kind of thing continues to happen — the film will leave you unable to shake the images of the disaster from your head — there must be hope that these avoidable environmental disasters can be prevented from happening again. The repercussions will be huge and if you think this is too far away for you to worry, then think again. Watch Oil Spill on Brightwide now and let us know what you think….