Edinburgh Film News April 2006

This month sees some great news come the way of frustrated auteurs, desperate for a chance to prove that old maxim that 'everyone has a story to tell'. More often than not the process of getting a story down, filling in endless forms and then waiting for the kindly worded rejection letter is too much for any wannabe filmmaker to bear. The marvellously egalitarian Pilton Video see the process differently and are currently accepting applications for the funding of 'Streetwise Films', a new micro budget HD short film scheme for Edinburgh.

Five projects will be selected and given expenses budgets of £500 along with unlimited access to rehearsal spaces, high definition camera and sound equipment and post production facilities. Even better news is that entrants don't have to spend the better part of a working week with the attached bureaucracy. The only stipulation is a one page synopsis of a short drama or documentary idea based in Edinburgh to reach Pilton Video by the 14th of April. Besides dripping with a common sense approach, this scheme offers an ideal opportunity for anyone who fancies themselves as the next Shane Meadows.

For filmmakers who already have their masterpiece in the can, the deadline has almost arrived for submissions for this year's Edinburgh International Film Festival. To get a chance to see your work in the UK's most prestigious film festival, you need to submit any features or shorts by April 18. Go to www.edfilmfest.org.uk for details and to learn of the miraculous new online submission scheme.

As for the mere muses out there, this month sees the continuation of Filmhouse's excellent CINEMA/ART season with three rarely seen short films by David Lynch. The shorts in question were shot in Lynch's student days between 1966-70 and are much closer in style to his groundbreaking (and deeply disturbing) 'Eraserhead'. The shorts will play alongside Matthew Barney's equally fascinating and bizarre 'Cremaster 2', the most sexually explicit and violent film in the infamous Cremaster Cycle. Be warned.