The Future Shorts Festival, now the biggest global pop-up film festival, has announced its largest growth do date since 2003, unveils the Spring Season programme and introduces the Future Shorts Audience Award.
The Future Shorts ambition and difference is to celebrate how our community and audience see the world and experience cinema - ‘another Hollywood’ - from the municipal buildings in post-communist Bucharest, Romania the army camps of Basra, Iraq to the cinemas of Austin, Texas and cinema shacks of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.
Following the re-launch of the Future Shorts Festival and Winter Season in November 2011, the global audience has tripled in size to more than 25,000 people across 55 countries and 150 cities, all part of a massive screening network and powerful community, showcasing the most exciting short films and filmmakers from around the world.
Prior to launching the quarterly programme format, Future Shorts Festival was featured in 15 countries and 55 cities. The Spring Season
The new feature length Spring Programme features 7 classic, cult and award-winning short films and will be screening from March 1st through May 31st 2012 and include: Nash Edgerton’s Cannes and Sundance hit 'Bear', the follow-up to his sensational 'Spider'; Sam Taylor-Wood’s multi-award winning and BAFTA nominated 'Love You More'; and the latest short film work from Spike Jonze, among others to be announced soon. The Audience Award will be voted by our global audience and announced on 31st May.
Fabien Riggall, Founder and Creative Director Future Shorts said: "The Future Shorts festival will continue to allow people wherever they are to be able to host their own mini film festival whilst allowing filmmakers to reach the largest global audience for their work.
"With over 25,000 attending and 2 million watching the FS channel online, this is the next generation film festival where anyone can take part."
The success of the Winter programme has featured Future Shorts Festival in varying locations including: a secret gallery space in Kabul Afghanistan, a fashion hall what is a fashion concept store in Cairo, Egypt, an independent cinema in Los Angeles, California and a bamboo pop-up cinema in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Future Shorts Festival is a true celebration of cinema, community connectivity and short films in revolutionary cities, world capitals and new territories.
Kareem El Shafei, Cairo Future Shorts Festival screening partner, said: "Earlier in the year, the communal bond between Egyptians was tested when the police had withdrawn from the streets during the revolution and we were forced to camp out in the street to protect the neighbourhood from escaped prisoners.
"Future Shorts Festival came at a time when the sense of camaraderie was at its peak; taking part in bringing the community together for a night of art appreciation gives people the hope and strength to stay true to their dreams."
Created in 2003, Future Shorts’ defining format showcases a single programme often alongside live music, DJs and art across a huge network of music halls, cinemas and galleries - an alternative to the traditional film festival model.
Films featured in the Winter season included Oscar-winner 'God of Love', the 2011 Sundance-winner 'Deeper than Yesterday', BAFTA-winner 'The Eagleman Stag', David O’Reilly’s multi-award winning 'The External World' and one-take wonder, 'Incident By A Bank', which won the Golden Bear at Berlinale last year.
Future Shorts Festival is powered by a global community of screening partners. Every three months, Future Shorts HQ in London curates a feature-length programme of some of the best classic, cult and award-winning short films from around the world.
The festival programme is then made available to a global network of screening partners who book, organize and host the festival in their local community.
Screening partners pay a fixed fee for the festival programme, which varies according to the intended size of their audience, and then promote the screening, charge for tickets and keep any profits.
Future Shorts is the first film festival to spilt profits from the licence fees with the filmmakers in the current festival programme.
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