Flirting With Flamenco Watch a scene from the romantic comedy, starring Holly Davidson.

The Gigolos See a clip from Richard Bracewell's debut comedy feature.

Little White Lies Watch a promo for director Caradog James' Welsh comedy-drama.

Powerless View the trailer for Matt Daniels' psychological thriller.

The West Wittering Affair See a scene from David Scheinmann's sex comedy.

The filmmakers behind low budget Brit pics The West Wittering Affair and Flirting With Flamenco will be rubbing shoulders with Luc Besson, Richard Linklater and Terry Gilliam at this year's Cambridge Film Festival. That's because, more than any other UK festival, Cambridge positions low budget Brit pics at the heart of its programme. "We were turned down for Edinburgh and a few other festivals, but the people at Cambridge are just wonderful," says producer Neville Raschid, who follows 2005's festival screening of Lost Dogs with the premiere of his romantic comedy Flirting With Flamenco. "The screening gives us the vital exposure we need to get UK exhibitors to look and say, 'OK, we'll give this film a shot.' It's a very competitive and rough market here and, sadly, UK exhibitors set the benchmark very high for independent British films."

The people behind Cambridge Film Festival's inclusive programme are Tony Jones and Rebekah Polding. "It's very much the spirit of the festival to support independent filmmakers," Rebekah states. "Our ideal is to show the whole breadth of cinema production and to support the people on the margins and build audiences for them. We try and show people that there's lots of exciting stuff beyond the films you see advertised on every bus shelter."

The British films showing at this year's festival show the variety of films being made on the margins: Matt Daniels' powerful psychological thriller Powerless; Jim Doyle's cheery chick flick Flirting With Flamenco; David Scheinmann's sharp sex comedy The West Wittering Affair; Caradog James' Welsh comedy-drama Little White Lies; and Richard Bracewell's witty comedy The Gigolos. Most have already secured UK distribution, but they'll be looking to boost their media profile and generate much-needed buzz with exhibitors at Cambridge.

Rebekah says these films aren't part of some quota system and are showing on merit. "There are some superb movies being made here for very little money but with huge amounts of determination, creativity and passion, and they really are some of the best films in the festival," she believes. "Every time we requested one of these films, we'd watch it and be stunned at the quality we were getting. The Gigolos is perhaps my personal favourite, just because of the cast - Susannah York, Anna Massey and Sîan Phillips. Seeing these grand dames of British cinema in a low-budget, sparkly new independent feature was just fabulous! We've chosen very, very carefully and these are the films we have absolute confidence that audiences will enjoy."

Little White Lies producer John Giwa-Amu is fully aware of the importance of the festival screening. "With its mix of black comedy and contemporary politics Little White Lies is the kind of film that festivals the world over should embrace. UK festivals are very important to us as this is the primary audience for our film, and having a UK audience view our film in the cinema - as it was intended to be seen - is the realisation of our primary objective."

Rebekah is also clear about the benefits for the films screening at Cambridge. "We're unusual as a festival in that we work with distributors all year round, and we work very hard to make sure that they come to the festival, and that we feed back to them audience responses. If we can say that 75 people bought a ticket to come and see a film with no marketing budget, and that 40 of them wrote into the festival website to say that they enjoyed it, that's really strong evidence that there's a potential audience out there. And that's what a distributor is looking for."

Three filmmakers with movies showing at Cambridge share their experiences of getting into festivals...

MATT DANIELS
Director, Powerless
Festivals are vitally important in giving your film an edge. If you are completely independent and you want to sell your film to a distributor or pick up a sales agent, it helps to have evidence that your film is successful. Audience figures and numbers for festival screenings are really important as are press reviews and media coverage. When we screened at Cardiff we sold out twice, and before bigger budgeted movies such as Vera Drake and Garden State. This kind of success gives your film an edge and makes a great intro when you first contact an agent.

Getting into film festivals requires a lot of effort and determination. You have to remember that your film is going to be watched by a programmer who has a massive pile of DVDs to get through and it is highly likely that if the film is not grabbing their attention after the first ten minutes that they will move on to the next film. I had most success with UK festivals when I had taken time to talk to the festival director or staff personally about the film.

BEN TIMLETT
Producer, The West Wittering Affair
Our UK film festival route has been quite a strange one. We were rejected from Edinburgh and London and kind of wondered what to do next. We knew it was really important to get press on the movie to attract distribution and other festivals, so we tried a different approach. We screened the film in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival against the Edinburgh Film Festival - one of the fringe organisations had turned the old Odeon Cinema into a theatre and agreed to screen it. So we set it up and showed the film over three weeks as a kind of 'preview' preview. The press came and we received fantastic write-ups: one was centre page in The Scotsman, kicking out the film festival press at the time. This really got us going; it also validated to us that the film worked for audiences and gave us the drive to push on.

It's very important to get your film into UK fests, as small UK independent movies need a platform from which to sell the film - specifically to UK distributors. The remaining world market still expects you to have a UK deal if you are a UK film.

TONY BRACEWELL
Co-Producer, The Gigolos
We've been selective - to a degree - over the festivals we've gone for, so we premiered last November at a great festival in Hollywood, the AFI Festival, which meant that we premiered alongside films like Tsotsi, Transamerica and Walk The Line. Edinburgh and London don't have the same impact in terms of the industry.

If you can show people a film works, half the battle's won.

There's lots of reasons why festivals are important. For starters, there's a great feelgood factor for the cast and everyone involved in the movie. And in terms of a release plan, it had always been our aim to launch The Gigolos off the back of a festival. It's all about getting programmers or buyers to say, 'This is a successful film because it's packed out screenings and they got some really good local and national press. If I put it in my cinema I'm not going to lose money on it.'

And that's one of the great things about festivals. If you get it right, you can show people that your film is commercially viable - if you can show people it works, half the battle's won. Everything we've done has been about showing people that it is successful rather than telling them it's going to be successful. And for independent films I think that's such a key difference.

The Cambridge Film Festival runs from 6-16 July 2006. Powerless screens on Friday 7th and Saturday 8th July; Flirting With Flamenco is on Sunday 9th; The Gigolos on Tuesday 11th and Thursday 13th; Little White Lies on Thursday 13th; and The West Wittering Affair on Friday 14th. For more details contact the CFF box office on 08707 55 12 42.

Adrian Hennigan | Published 06 July 06

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