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March 16, 2011
 

Birds Eye View Film Festival: Twitterview with Katerina Cizek

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“To be human in this century is to be urban” says Czech-Canadian filmmaker, Katerina Cizek, whose online feature, Highrise: Out My Window, takes the viewer/user on a fantastical journey through the some of the world’s most notorious concrete housing estates.

This award-winning film is a beautiful, poignant mix of intimate stories: all told in the first person, and all revealing powerful emotions: varying degrees of love, hate, joy and despair.

Highrise: Out My Window was an obvious choice for the innovation strand in this year’s Birds Eye View Film Festival, which I was lucky enough to programme. In attempting to be true to the film’s online, interactive format, it seemed only right that we should run a Twitterview with Katerina during the festival.

Running a live Twitterview is exciting and surprisingly challenging: you get peaks and troughs of activity: a whole load of questions get asked at once, then there’ll be a lull. And it’s easy to forget to put both @ and then the hashtag on every question/ comment, especially when the discussion gets heated. Well done Katerina for keeping her cool!

Apologies if you’re reading this blog post a while after the posting date, but if you’re reading this on or around 16 March 2011, the entire Twitterview is available now.

Filed under  //   Birds Eye View   Highrise: Out My Window   Katerina Cizek   Twitterview  

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January 26, 2011
 

Rachel Millward announcing the Innovation Strand at last night's #BEV2011 launch

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I'm dead chuffed to have been involved with the Birds Eye View Film Festival which held a fabulous launch event last night at The Century Club. A great programme of films was announced, to a stunningly glam+talented mostly female audience: Rosamund Pike, Cherie Blair and Imogen Heap were there. And it was great to have chats with Cathy Rogers (RDF), Alex Mecklenburg (Ogilvy) and Victoria Mather (Stanley Pickle). 

As BEV's Creative Director, Rachel Millward, says in this clip, there'll be some great innovative works at this year's festival: namely Highrise, an interactive online documentary about life in tower blocks around the world by Canadian filmmaker Katerina Cizek, and Women of Hamas, which was partly directed over Skype when access to the camera crew became impossible. I was responsible for programming the innovation strand, so very much looking forward to seeing how the more experimental works such as these are received.

It was a great night, but these are tough times for women in film, with the UK Film Council going and diversity cuts being made across the board. If you'd like to support women filmmakers, one great way is to join The Nest (men welcome)! For just £35 a year you'll help sustain the female side of the industry, and get VIP treatment at this year's festival to boot!

Filed under  //   BEV2011   Birds Eye View   Film  

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