Hackney Film Festival this Weekend

Hackney Film Festival, the borough’s annual showcase of local film and audio-visual talent, will return to the borough on the 7-9 September this year after a successful 2011, which saw the festival double in size.

The festival’s opening evening will take place at the New Empowering Church, a warehouse venue near London Fields. An impressive looking line-up includes a live cinema performance by internationally acclaimed cross-media collective, The Light Surgeons, who have worked with everyone from The Rolling Stones to the Tate Modern.

Local sound artist Scanner, aka Londoner Robin Rimbaud, will also be on the bill. According to festival director Steven McInerney, “It’s important to focus on sound as it plays an equally significant role in the moving image”.

Established venues such as Café Oto and the Rio Cinema will get in on the act, with the former providing the setting for HFF’s Saturday night shindigs with Expanded Cinema. The evening will see DIY multimedia collage duo Sculpture weld electronic sound and visuals into an arresting whole, joined on the bill by a number of idiosyncratic individuals including Guy Sherwin, Sally Golding, and Lynn Loo, who will provide all sorts of weird and wonderful sound and film cross-overs. The Rio, meanwhile, will host BAFTA award-winning short film screenings.

Elsewhere, the Hackney Picture House will see a free young emerging filmmakers screening, whilst over in Hackney Wick a there will be a free screening of Swandown, featuring Iain Sinclair, author of London Orbital and Hackney, That Rose-Red Empire. Sinclair and director Andrew Kötting will also be involved in a Q&A afterwards.

For more go to Hackney Film Festival.

Thanks to the Hackney Citizen for this.