Welcome to the Borderlines 2007
Borderlines Film Festival, which opens across the Herefordshire and Shropshire borders on Friday March 23, is bringing the Oscars back home. This year's Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film went to The Lives of Others, about the Kafka-esque life of an East German Stasi agent. Not due for release until April, The Lives of Others will have its first out-of-London showing at The Courtyard, Hereford at a special BAFTA/Screen WM screening on Sunday March 25.
Herefordshire audiences can also catch the Oscar winners, Pan's Labyrinth and Babel, starring Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, at The Courtyard during the eleven day Festival.
Borderlines opens with Renee Zellweger's formidable performance as Miss Potter and closes with Cate Blanchett, Judi Dench and Bill Nighy in Richard Eyre's Notes on a Scandal with its deliciously wicked script. Oscar winners will also be screened at some of the Festival's 23 country venues. An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's shocking warning about global warming, which picked up two Oscars, shows at Leominster (Friday March 30) and Garway (Sunday April 1) while Kingsland has opted for the bittersweet double Oscar winner Little Miss Sunshine (Friday 23 March).
Simon and Alison Durrant's Green Dragon at Bishop's Frome becomes the first pub to premiere a film: Mike Jackson from BBC's Flog It! will screen his A Pocketful of Hops about a local farming family on Tuesday March 27. Hereford premieres include Real Life on the Black Hill, Naomi Vera-Sanso's film about Black Mountains' housekeeper Dorothy Howells' own cine camera work from the 1960s; The Rural Media Company's light-hearted look at climate change, Costa Del Marches starring Robert Duncan (Gus in Drop the Dead Donkey); and First Light Premiere (Wednesday March 2) when four young filmmakers present their own short films.
This year's Borderlines Debate, on Saturday March 31, is Greenham 25 Years On. Grandmother Patricia Pulham explains why she is still campaigning - despite being imprisoned thirteen times - after screenings of Jane Jackson's 1983 A Common Cause and Bridget Jones' director Beeban Kidron and Amanda Richardson's Carry Greenham Home. Jackson, Kidron and Richardson will join a live debate with the Guardian's Lindsay Poulton, London MEP Jean Lambert and Atomic Mirror's Janet Bloomfield.
Thursday March 29 is Borderlines Film and Disability Day which will include a screening and discussion of The Crippendales, Havana Marking's extraordinary documentary about Lee Kemp paralysed from the waist down yet recently voted one of the Sexiest Men in Yorkshire. Havana Marking will join disabled artist Tanya Raabe and Claire Fisher from the BBC's Desirability series, for an open discussion on sexuality and disability in film.
Offline Film Festival runs in Ludlow Assembly Rooms from Saturday 31 March to Sunday 1 April. Borderlines first fringe festival has been organised by local young people, there is an eclectic mix of workshops (that anyone can take part in), and short film screenings. Highlights include a showing of The Coconut Revolution introduced by director Dom Rotheroe and Transformer Live, when local bands play specially composed music to accompany five original short films.