Northern Lights Film Festival 2010 (From The Northern Echo)

Northern Lights Film Festival 2010

12:03pm Thursday 18th March 2010 in

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THE Northern Lights Film Festival 2010 aims to bring together the public, film buffs and media industry with a mix of screenings, events and participation.

You can see the world’s oldest surviving advert, watch ad men battle it out to repackage Whitley Bay as a Hollywood destination, learn about DIY film-making and see new work in progress.

During a sci-fi night, visitors, via the latest science and media technology, can experience life as an astronaut, watch special effects, have a go on a motion simulator ride and set their own UFO Northern Light into the sky.

As programme director Lisa Laws puts it, the festival “boasts a rollercoaster ride of events that will grab people’s attention and make them experience an emotional reaction whether excitement, fear, sadness, hope, horror or joy”.

Documentary maker Chris Atkins leads a Bafta event when he will give the inside story on how to create and shape a documentary, while his producer Christina Slater reveals the steps needed to keep the film-making legally sound and Atkins out of jail.

There’s also a screening of his film Starsuckers.

Maureen from Middlesbrough – “she’s not a professional film programmer or judge, but she’s not daft and she knows what she likes”

– has chosen short films to be screened.

Tim Hetherington will talk about filming in the war zone, based on covering the Liberian civil war from a rebel perspective, and Mark Cousins will introduce his new film The First Movie, in which he visits a small village in the Kurdish North of Iraq with cameras to allow children to “express their inner imaginations”.

There are screenings of The Room, dubbed “the Citizen Kane of bad movies”, and Colin, the British horror film made for only £45. Director Marc Price will attend the screening.

Closing night films are Werner Herzog’s The Bad Lieutenant – Port Of Call: New Orleans with Nicolas Cage and Kick-Ass, the film of Mark Millar’s cult comic classic.

The festival runs from March 20 to 28 across venues in Newcastle and Durham.

Information on niff.co.uk or 0191-227-5522.