New UK comedy film festival announced
The Cofilmic Comedy Film Festival, a brand new event designed to give budding TV and film hopefuls a leg up into the industry, will launch next year.
The festival will run from 31st October - 1st November 2011, and will offer those hoping to break into comedy film and television production - including actors, writers, comedians, producers and directors - the chance to submit a short film to a leading panel of judges. Cofilmic will take place in Manchester, running off the back of the city's comedy festival, and will also provide a programme of panel discussions and workshops from industry experts.
Cofilmic will be supported by The Comedy Store, with the club's Manchester venue in Deansgate hosting the awards ceremony at the end of the festival, where the films selected by the judges will be celebrated.
BAFTA winning producer Charlie Hanson, who is currently working with Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant to create their next sitcom Life's Too Short; BBC Comedy North executive producer Jon Montague; and Comedy Store founder Don Ward will be amongst the jury selecting the winning films.
Cofilmic is the brainchild of Manchester businesswoman Janet Harrison who, after producing her first comedy short film Master Motivator earlier this year, is looking to progress onto making comedy features, as well as providing people in a similar position to herself support to progress up the comedy film ladder.
The founder and director says: "Cofilmic will also provide an ongoing, professional talent development platform for budding hopefuls. The overarching aim being to create an environment that may kick-start a whole new era in comedy film making for the UK, based out of Manchester."
She adds: "We have a wealth of talent in the North West who can inspire others to achieve great things. Lack of funding means that new filmmakers will have to be very commercial in their approach, no matter how small their project and we hope to help people with this process into a formal career path. We have been amazed by the amount of support we have received so far and we have some exciting partnerships in the pipeline - watch this space!"
The festival will be formally launched in February 2011 at an event in Manchester, and submissions for the short film competition will open in May 2011.