Falmouth films explore fragility of farming system and family fable

A hard-hitting documentary that reveals the fragility of the Cornish farming system in the context of unsustainable supermarket practices, and a personal film that explores why grandad was never mentioned at home are just two of the films being screened by University College Falmouth (UCF) at this weekend's Cornwall Film Festival.

Kerris Farmers: The Price of Cheap Food and Looking for Grandad - both by Barry Cooper, who is a Senior Lecturer on UCF's BA(Hons) in Digital Media - are being premiered at the event on Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 November respectively.

Kerris Farmers: The Price of Cheap Food explores how the strain of intensive farming impacts on the land, on farmers and their animals, and questions how much longer this state of affairs can continue. Whilst the film portrays the beauty of Cornwall's landscape, the farmers' own words tell a very different story of supermarkets paying less for food than it costs to grow, an ecosystem pushed to the limits and the challenges faced by an ageing workforce.

"This hard edged documentary forms part of a bigger research project that aims to create awareness of the way supermarkets operate; to develop a participatory project that highlights the effect of their policies; and to build networks of alternative producers," explained Barry Cooper. "It is all about the future of world food production on a macro scale, but starting with the local context. Through my research, I am seeking to initiate a change in the relationship between supermarkets and food producers, and an associated blog - http://thepriceofcheapfood.wordpress.com/ - invites comments and stories about supermarket tactics as well as the sustainability of our agricultural systems."

Kerris Farmers will be premiered at 2pm on Saturday 14 November in Screen 4 of the Phoenix Cinema in Falmouth as part of Cornish Shorts.

Looking for Grandad, sponsored by Wild Works as a result of Barry winning a Big Pitcher award at last year's Festival, will be screened between 7.15pm and 8.30pm on Sunday 15 November at UCF's Woodlane Lecture Theatre, prior to the Awards Ceremony that is being hosted there by performance poet and BBC radio broadcaster, Murray Lachlan Young. Viewers will observe the story that Barry pitched to the final night audience a year ago, and see the results of months of research compressed into a three minute film, leading them through a trail of family secrets to reveal why no one wanted to talk about grandad.

As a Principal Funder of the Cornwall Film Festival, UCF is also sponsoring a series of UK, South West and Cornwall premieres, including The Men Who Stare at Goats, starring George Clooney, in collaboration with South West Screen; a number of developmental workshops on topics such as the art of sound and film noir, and the Another Country International Short Film Award. As well as submitting films for the various competitions, students have also submitted animation as part of the Hayle Oral History Project; will participate in the Student Films in Competition jury and host events for schools during the Festival.

In addition, UCF, in collaboration with RELAYS, (the Legacy Trust UK and Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE)-funded programme of sport and culture in the lead up to the 2012 Games), The Works and Cornwall Film Festival, will bring a unique dance-for-camera element to this year's event. Called Dance, Camera, Action, this two-day workshop with leading dance filmmakers, Dan Farberoff and Becky Edmunds, will culminate in two separate screenings of dance film work from leading national and regional dance filmmakers.

The first screening on Friday 13 November at the Phoenix Cinema in Falmouth is Forward Motion, a British Council project co-produced with South East Dance and supported by Arts Council England, featuring historic, seminal and ground breaking films to create a moving snapshot of Britain's prolific screen dance output. A curated screening profiling leading dance-for-camera work from dance and film maker collaborations in Cornwall and the South West will follow on Saturday 14 November. This will include work by Cscape in collaboration with Mark Jenkin, Dan Farberoff, Emily Dobson and Brett Harvey and many others, alongside work by UCF BA(Hons) Choreography students, Jane Castree and Sophie Utting.

"The Cornwall Film Festival presents UCF with an invaluable opportunity to showcase the exceptional emerging talent and world-class industry expertise that characterises its School of Media," added Director of the School of Media, Paul Inman. "It provides students and staff from our degree courses in Digital Animation, Digital Media, Film and Dance with unrivalled opportunities to attract international attention, and Falmouth should be extremely proud that a film festival of such calibre is hosted here."

For further information about BA(Hons) Digital Animation, Digital Media, Film and Dance at University College Falmouth, visit www.falmouth.ac.uk/media, email admissions@falmouth.ac.uk or telephone Admissions on 01326 213730.

For further information about the Cornwall Film Festival, visit http://www.cornwallfilmfestival.com/

University College Falmouth is the only independent Higher Education institution in Cornwall with the powers to award degrees in its own name. It has two campuses in Cornwall - at Woodlane in Falmouth and Tremough in Penryn (which it owns, and jointly manages with the University of Exeter) - and a third campus at Totnes in Devon, following its merger with Dartington College of Arts in 2008.

This merger created a new institution focusing on the expansion of Falmouth's expertise in Art, Design and Media and Dartington's expertise in Choreography, Music, Theatre, Art and Writing. The Devon-based courses will relocate to a new, high-specification Performance Centre at Tremough in 2010, paving the way for a new specialist Arts University in Cornwall by 2012/2013 that will be unique to the South West.

The College is a founding partner in the Combined Universities in Cornwall (CUC), a unique initiative to promote regional economic regeneration through Higher Education, funded mainly by the European Union (Objective One), the South West Regional Development Agency, and the Higher Education Funding Council for England, with support from Cornwall Council.

Ends

For further information about University College Falmouth, please contact Jilly Easterby MCIPR, Head of Public Affairs, Telephone: 01326 213792, or email: jilly.easterby@falmouth.ac.uk

Tweet