Harrogate Film Festival is bringing the cinema to you during the Coronavirus lockdown with its new scheme #StayAtHomeShorts starting Friday 26th April 2020 where they will publish a short film a day – for free.
Having just finished it’s ever-popular independent filmmakers competition at the start of March, the Festival has selected it’s very best submissions and award-winning shorts from over the years to screen online, with the permission of filmmakers, over the lockdown period in a bid to help encourage people to stay home and keep providing new cinema experiences to film-goers while in isolation.
Boasting a library of over 2000 short films for over 80 countries submitted since it’s inauguration in 2017, the Festival will be releasing films via it’s Facebook, YouTube and website which will then be available to view for seven-days after publishing, free of charge. All films are between two and twenty minutes in length across a total of ten different genres including drama, comedy, animation and horror.
The Festival will release a short biography, credit and age recommendation with each film, but they promise there will be content for “all the family” with Managing Director at the Festival, Adam Chandler saying: “Normally people come to the Festival to watch these brilliant short films each year and thanks to the fabulous filmmakers, they’re allowing us to bring short independent cinema to you, through this initiative, during lockdown, for free.”
There are local films included in the selection as well, with the 2020 Audience Choice Award winner, “Addiction” by Harrogate filmmaker, Lewis Robinson, and Northern Film School student Aymeric Nicolet’s romantically charged film, “Bus Stop Romeo”, shot in Leeds.
The initiative will begin this Friday 26 April 2020 with films released at 1pm each day until further notice. The organisers already have near 50 films lined up.
Keith Dando, Course Director in Leeds School of Arts, said:
The #StayAtHomeShorts initiative provides us with yet another opportunity to showcase the talent here at the Northern Film School through our ongoing partnership with organisers at Harrogate Film Festival.
Bus Stop Romeo is a film which Aymeric Nicolet and his talented team created whilst at the Northern Film School at Leeds Beckett University, and is a pleasure to watch.
Its lightness of touch and sureness of style reminds me of Classic Hollywood via La La Land, and is just perfect stay at home viewing.
