Around this time of the year, you’ll usually find me hunkered away in a hotel in Bristol, splitting my time between dark screening rooms and hanging out with friends old and new. However, this year, my regular highlight of the festival circuit, Encounters, has joined the new normal for physical events by going digital, so I’ll be starved of my usual dose of IRL hangouts, discussions, and communal screenings. Thankfully, I still have the films, as they’ll all be available to view as part of their 2020 Digital Edition.
The only complaint I usually have with Encounters is it just feels impossible to watch all I want to watch, with screenings non-stop from 10am to, sometimes, midnight. The main positive therefore of a digital edition is it allows you more freedom to dip in and out (the £10 Digital Festival Pass gives you access to the programme for a 3-week period from Friday 18th September – Sunday 11th October 2020) and I’ve already marked my program with all the shorts (which are a lot) I want to watch at this year’s event. For once, I look forward to having the time to watch them without feeling exhausted at the end of it.
For Short of the Week, the 2020 Encounters programme offers up a lot of names that will already be familiar to our audience. Below we take a look at the curation, and pick out films we’ve already featured on our site, some we’ve got coming soon and a big handful of new shorts from some of our favourite directors.
ALREADY FEATURED on S/W
As is the case with a lot of film festivals nowadays, Encounters will still programme your short film if its already online, so it was no surprise to look through this year’s offering and find a handful of films you can already watch on Short of the Week (unfortunately Déjeuner sur l’herbe, which plays the festival this year, is currently offline).
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COMING SOON
With the S/W calendar quickly filling up for the rest of 2020 (we’ve even got films scheduled for early 2021), there are a couple of films playing Encounters that are already scheduled to screen on our platform in the not-too-distant future. Here’s a sneak peek:
Mercury’s Retrograde by Zohar Dvir
One of my favourites from this year’s RCA grad films, Mercury’s Retrograde sports an unusual pastel-coloured aesthetic to tell the strange story of a millennial looking for her magic 8 ball inside her subconscious.
Coming to S/W Oct 14th 2020
Hungry Joe by Paul Holbrook & Sam Dawe
The unsettling story of a child with an insatiable and increasingly inhumane appetite, Holbrook and Dawe’s Hungry Joe was a short we found impossible to ignore. If you like high-concept creepy Horror brought to the screen through great imagery, this will be right up your street.
Coming to S/W Jan 11th 2021
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NEW SHORTS FROM ALUMS
As a long-time programmer for S/W, one of the most exciting parts of a film festival for me is seeing new films from directors we’ve featured in the past. We’re proud of the filmmakers we feature, and checking out what they’ve done next, witnessing their filmmaking evolve, is such a rewarding experience. This year’s Encounters programme sees 13 previously featured filmmakers screening brand new films:
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ALREADY ONLINE
Alongside the films we’ve already featured on our site, and a raft of which we hope to feature in the future, Encounters also includes a lot of work we admire, but which do not feel quite right for programming voice. From music videos to impressive motion graphic pieces, here are some choice selections you can currently watch online:
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Like most film festivals around the world, Encounters now needs our support more than ever. If you want to champion the festival and watch a ton of great shorts, consider buying a Digital Pass for £10 and start watching the films from Friday 18th September.
S/W looks forward to returning to the physical event in 2021—I hope I’ll see you there!
If you’re a filmmaker screening at Encounters and want S/W to feature your film, be sure to submit and let us know you played the festival in your submission.
Rob Munday