2022 Special Events and Guests

Ali & Ava – Opening Night, Thursday 24th March

Kamal's writes for stage, screen and radio. He Listed in Prolific North's top scriptwriters of 2017. After reading Architecture at Cambridge University he then received the Brian Park Scholarship (Shed Productions) to complete an MA in TV Fiction Writing at Glasgow Caledonian University.

Most recently, Kamal was Story Consultant on the BAFTA nominated Ali & Ava written and directed by the award winning Clio Barnard, which premiered at Cannes Festival 2021. Kamal is part of the development and Writersroom on The Secret Lives of The Amir Sisters (Bandit/ BBC). He is currently shooting his first BFI short film And Their Music Mingles... directed by Dominic Leclerc (Call The Midwife, Silent Witness) and Exec Produced with Clio Barnard.

Follow @kamal_kaan on Twitter

The Story Of Looking – Saturday 26th March 2pm, Alhambra

Mark Cousins, who will be hosting an online Q&A after the screening of The Story Of Looking, is a renowned film maker and film journalist. His documentary A Story of Children and Film was well-received at KFF in 2013, just one of over 150 festivals at which his films have been screened.

Throughout his career has interviewed directors, producers and actors including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, David Lynch, Roman Polanski, Kirk Douglas, Jeanne Moreau, Jack Lemmon, Janet Leigh and Rod Steiger.

He has had a long collaboration with Tilda Swinton, including carrying a 33.5-tonne portable cinema across the Scottish Highlands to bring cinema around the country. Titled 'Pilgrimage: A Scottish Road Movie Festival', it became one of the central parts of the 2011 documentary 'Cinema Is Everywhere'.

Follow @markcousinsfilm on Twitter

Carl Hunter studied Graphic Design (BA) and Multimedia Design (MA) and worked as an art director designing record sleeves. He recorded and toured with Liverpool pop band The Farm, having numerous hit singles/albums both in Britain and Europe. His love of Graphic Design and Photography led to a career in film making as a director, producing and directing over 30 documentaries for broadcast, plus short films and music videos. He is also the creative director of the independent record label 'The Label'. Sometimes Always Never is his first feature film as director.

Since the early 2000s, Carl has worked closely with Frank Cottrell Boyce (writer of Millions and 24 Hour Party People). In 2007, they released the feature film Grow Your Own, a British comedy set on a Merseyside allotment which, notably, sold out the Studio at KFF. In 2009, Carl adapted the short story Accelerate, written by Frank Cottrell Boyce, into a short film for KFF's 10th Anniversary.

Carl will be showing two of his new short films More Than Time and Still Rings on Saturday afternoon.

Jacqueline Saphra is a poet and writer. Her debut collection The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye, 2011) was nominated for the Aldeburgh Prize. Works since then include If I Lay on my Back I Saw Nothing but Naked Women (2017, winner of the Saboteur Award) and A Bargain with the Light: Poems after Lee Miller (2017, nominated for the Saboteur Award).

Her collection All My Mad Mothers was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Her series of poems, performed with Benjamin Tassie's Musical Miniatures for cello and piano, won the Best Collaborative Work in the Saboteur Awards.

Jacqueline is reading poetry during the screening of Still Rings on Saturday afternoon.

Saturday 26th March 2pm, Theatre By The Lake - Free Entry

Saturday afternoon sees the staging of the Osprey Short Film Awards, which is free to enter at the Theatre by the Lake. Your chance to see the best new film-making talent in Cumbria as well as two short films from Carl Hunter, director of the acclaimed Sometimes, Always, Never the first film in the festival to sell out the Theatre by the Lake back in 2019.

More Than Time

Carl Hunter documents the streets of Liverpool as they have never been seen before, in his new, short film More Than Time.

During Lockdown in Liverpool, anonymous messages about 'missing and memory' were left on an answer machine. These ghostly messages float above still photographs of an empty Liverpool UK. The film is a place where memory populates the streets of a once vibrant city, instead of its people.

Still Rings

Still Rings is a short, poetic film, that reflects on the second Lockdown.

The film is a collaboration between award wining poet Jacqueline Saphra, Carl Hunter and a collection of first time filmmakers. Carl took a photograph from the same place on Crosby beach everyday and Jacqueline wrote a poem everyday. Words and pictures takes us on a journey where sound is used to reimagine memory, creating sonic ghosts that serve to help us remember what we were missing.

The films were produced for the institute of Creative Enterprise. (ICE)