The Wolf behind Fundada interviews founding co-directors Alice Bradshaw and Nancy Porter.
Wolfie: Where does the name Fundada come from?
Alice: It’s a mix of 2 of our main interests in art: Fun + dada.
Nancy: Well we wanted something that represented, something that could be a play on words but also something legitimate. It means ‘founded’ in Spanish and came off a bottle of Havana Club rum. We love rum and this subtle tip of our hats to it seemed perfect.
W: Why a film festival?
N: I think it was an interesting move for me personally as it’s something I have never done before. It’s been great to be critically engaged in something that we are all exposed to and absorbed in. Instead of looking at the big films that are out there, it’s been a great experience to look at the smaller films which have a broad spectrum of talent and are interesting artistically.
A: Last year we were thinking of opening a gallery with a dedicated artists’ cinema space. The space we had in mind fell through but the opportunity to run a film festival as part of Halifax Festival came from Square Chapel who kindly offered us the venue and equipment to screen it. We had no good reason not to run it again this year. We’re planning other projects as Fundada though – not exclusively film.
W: This year FAFF comes to Wakefield. What prompted the move from Halifax?
A: The film festival or any other Fundada activity was never set to be tied to any geographical location. We’re peripatetic and opportunistic.
N: The opportunity came to us through Alice as she is a resident in the studio. Plus it has a pub. What’s better? Pint and a film.
W: What’s the ambiguous “Yes” / “No” for on the FAFF2011 submission form?
N: Interesting question! Originally we thought it’d be an amusing twist to our application forms. We were intentionally ambiguous what we want people to say Yes or No to.
A: It was an experiment to see if it prompted any surreal answers to the “questions.” It prompted more questions than answers.
N: We get a lot of ticks/crosses to Yes, some smiley faces and some questions. I like the response we’ve had to it.
W: Were there lots of submissions and does it take ages to review?
A: There were loads. We had them delivered to Westgate Studios and every week there was a new stack by the pigeonholes waiting for collection.
N: The reviewing process is a fairly long process but it never seems to drag because we get so many interesting and varied films, there’s always something for us to discuss and muse over.
A: We really impressed by how far our open call went. We had submissions from every corner of the world and it was great reviewing them all.
W: What are the criteria?
A: The submission criteria this year was a maximum of 20 minutes duration and the submissions had to be DVD pal. Last year there were no criteria as we had 5 screening days to play with so feature lengths were not out of the question. We found that despite receiving good quality feature lengths from around the world, short films were much more interesting for us. I think there’s definitely a subtle distinction between film film and art film. It’s not a simple one eg having or not having narrative. And we like film film too.
N: We called it Fundada Artists’ Film Festival because we particularly wanted films made by artists rather than films made by filmmakers. It’s not specifically a criteria though – it’s just suggested in the title, because essentially filmmakers are artists and artists who make films are filmmakers.
A: We also had to make submissions postal only on DVD pal because we had serious issues with film formats last year. Filthy little mov files caused so many problems as they are so incompatible. We had to go to Lumen in Leeds and use their Macs with Final Cut Pro just to convert the files into a workable format. With films already in DVD pal there’s no conversion and quality loss.
N: Essentially, the selection criteria is a mix of quality and subjectivity and also if the films will work together curatorially.
[continued]
