A quick first post

I'm hurriedly writing this before I head off to my first film of the Festival.  Since my parents travelled a few hundred miles to see me for my birthday yesterday (so no film going!) and I have a birthday related trip to Berlin from next Thursday, this year's film festival going is squeezed into 6 days for me. With work, my birthday party with friends, and a 1st birthday party as well, all crammed in.  But there is still time for 13 films! Whether there is time for dinner each night, I haven't yet worked out.

It's going to be another round the world trip, with Asia figuring heavily, but Europe and the Americas in there too.  

This year was one of the hardest to narrow down, but I think that's the sign of a really fascinating programme, so I am all the more excited this year for the slate of films.  My process is to work out which features I can go to (one year I will make some time, and spare money to go see some of the shorts) - this year it was 72. Read the programme and give it an initial rating out of 5 (virtually everything gets a 3 or 4, it's not the best process to be honest!) and then do some research onto all those with a score of 4 or more.  That got me down to around 30.  Some might be World Premieres so it comes down to gut instinct or seeing if the director has done anything interesting before.  But for the remainder, one of the most useful things is festival blogs.  Even a snippet can sell you the film - or put you off.  But whichever, it is really helpful and might give me the courage to really take a risk with my £9.  

Blogs helped get me down from 30 to about 20 and then the constraints of time (oh to be in 2 or 3 places at once) got me down to 13.  So just in case any of the films I'm going to see make it to other festivals before they are released, and I can help someone else discover a hidden gem of a film that they can't find much else about, I thought I'd share my thoughts here.

And even if no one else finds it helpful, at least it might save my friends from having to listen to me rambling on about how much I enjoyed a film they will probably never see.