Guest blog post from @ajenkins

A thoughtful post from @ajenkins that we're publishing to the Filminute blog.

I have been a big fan of Filminute since its inception. As a filmmaker and film lover, festivals have been my source for the new, the potentially overlooked and the thought provoking films. Festivals are especially critical for supporting documentaries and I count myself fortunate for the access to documentaries that festivals like Filminute provide.

I will never forget seeing the premiere of The Crying Game at TIFF and heard the air get sucked out of the theatre from the audience’s collective gasp when the film’s secret was revealed. It’s those unforgettable moments of surprise, joy, tears, anger and wonder that festivals are all about and Filminute has been able to provide those moments every year.

What’s more impressive is the power that the films are able to convey in just sixty seconds. Filminute illustrates how filmmakers can say so much with so little. It has been said that innovation comes from constraints. Filminute provides filmmakers constraints in spades and they respond with innovative stories, approaches and truly high calibre product.

Out of the twenty-five semi-finalists, the five films that really resonated with me this year in no particular order were:

5:27 - a juxtaposition of lots of activity with little movement

Choose Not To Fall - inspiration and overcoming fear through parkour

Dark Valley - adhering to Hitchcock’s mantra that what you don’t see is always scarier

Echoes - two periods in the same life connected through a mirror

Madam A. - sound and visuals married for powerful effect and a single object, a piece of barbed wire, telling so much without saying anything

I encourage you to take a few minutes, pardon the pun, and view the films. You will be provoked, touched and, most of all entertained.

Andrew Jenkins

Filmmaker in a previous life

Submissions..the home stretch

In 11 days, we'll close the door on submissions and begin to make our final selects for Filminute 2010. The persistent and perennial August 20 submission deadlines rules us for 8 months, and then we agonise for a few days making the final cuts. The endless viewing of films, the back and forth between our management team and prospective filmmakers — it always pays off. 

Our selection committee is picky and prickly, and for a reason. We expect our audience and our jurors to be picky and prickly so it's best that we be brutally critical first. Now 5 years into the festival, we owe quality to a worldwide audience when Filminute 2010 goes live on September 1 every year.

Last year, so much of the festival was intertwined with social media, especially with the appearance of LINE on the shortlist. That one-minute film originated as a Twitter post by Twitter fiction writer Arjun Basu. It went on to win our People's Choice award winner, and the twitterati definitely weighed in on that outcome!

Following on that, leading up to September 1 we ask you to do 2 things: join us on Facebook and/or on Twitter, because these platforms are becoming increasingly central to the Filminute festival experience.