FIF 2008 – Flanders Image Festival

10-12     oktober  2008, Kortemark, België

International Projection by invitation

Saturday 11 oktober morning.  1

A.1    Le Livre du Temps            Laure Gigou                                                    F1.

A.2    La vita in un giorno              Gigi Montali                                                      IT1.

A.3    A boy set apart                    Barbara Mullins                                               Aus1.

A.4    L’attaché Case                    Michèle & Michel Paret                                   F1.

A.5    Liefde en Leven op het Water ­­     Bie Lievens                                                     B1.

A.6    Mass Destruction        Didier de Daniloff                                            B 1. B.1    The Beach on the Wall        James Hamill                                                  N-IRL1.

B.2    Différent           Denys Quélever                                              F1. B.3    The sound of…       Keith Scott                                                      GB1.

B.4    Starcows        Christian Hendrickx & André Teyck                B1.

B.5    Oddech          Wiesiek (Wieslaw) Jaskulski                          PL1.

B.6    The Gathering         Ian Bateman                                                    GB1.

B.7    Pi     Marc Legein                                                    B 

Saturday 11 oktober afternoon 2. A.1    Kunst op zich(t)          Will Friesen en Leo Koppens                         NL2.

A.2    La Roma di Mussolini        Eric Kellens                                                     B2.

A.3    Les mains d’or        Gérard Desroches                                          F2.

A.4    Piove a Sarajevo   Luciano Bovino                                               IT2.

A.5    Alma      Robert Albright                                                GB2.

A.6    La femme aux bas blancs       Jean-Paul Petit            F  2.

B.1    Terugkeer van de Engelen           Mon Leemans   

B.2    Essay sur ma haine         Jacques Van de Weerdt       B2. B.3    Forest of Tane Mahuta     Erhard Hobrecker                                           CH2.

B.4    Anime penitenti          Ivan Zuliani                                                      IT2.

B.5    Route 66       Maurice & Liliane Dorikens                             B2.

B.6    A point of view     Mike Kersting & Brendan Murphy                   GB2.

B.7    Edik, Fils de Tamarlan         Jean-Pierre Simon                      F 

Saturday 11 oktober evening 3. A.1    This should be a Funeral?    Davide Niglia       IT3.

A.2    Tibet, a Culture of Peace      Eddy Callewaert                 B3

A.3    Striped pyjamas       Ron Davies & Peter Coles                             GB3.

A.4    L’oubli       Christian Hendrickx                                         B3.

A.5    Talbot House        Linda & Edgar Gibbs                                       GB3.

A.6    La passion de Manon         Denis Gelin                            F 3.

B.1    Gaudi’s dream            André Hartensveld                                          NL3.

B.2    De Boomgaard           Jacques Martens                                            B.3    Tajemnica I Melancholia Ulicy        “Landskapisci”                     PL3.

B.4    The Colour Thief     Jill K. Bunting                                                  GB3.

B.5    J’adore t’écrire          Stéphane Bidouze                                          F3.

B.6    The Last Great Steam Show on Earth   Colin Balls              GB 

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IRIS –25

by Sir George Pollock, Hon.FRPS

The first five RPS International Festivals had Junior and Student categories, but they were not very well supported, and this well-meant endeavour to interest young people in AV quietly died.

Digital AV has enabled a new start to be made, but it took the vision, knowledge, and energy of Maureen Albright to turn a theoretical possibility into practical reality.  She understood  that to encourage young people to take part, she needed simple rules, an offer of technical help, and the sort of prizes that would appeal to the young: cash or its equivalent.  It takes money to run a competition, but thanks to the strong educational purpose of the enterprise, the RPS Council were able to offer her a suitable grant, and outside sponsorship was not required.

The name of the competition “International Review of Images with Sound’” condensed into “IRIS” (or did the acronym come first?) and  the “minus 25” referred to the maximum age of entrants. 

Maureen made every effort to publicise the competition, and one girls’ school jumped at the opportunity and sent in a group entry in the Junior category of 60  –  yes, sixty  –  sequences!  Unfortunately, the teacher in charge seems to have misunderstood the purpose of the competition.  Every entry was on the subject of Spring (with a capital S), most of the rather limited number of photographs were taken by two of the teachers and not the girls, the music chosen was nearly always the same song by a group called “All Angels”, and the transition from one image to the next tended to be by one of a number of ‘trick’ changes available on the computer software.  The girls’ own contributions consisted almost entirely of the poems (on Spring) which accompanied each sequence, some, in my limited experience, very beautiful.  The text appeared on the screen, usually as the image was zoomed out, so that one had to wait for the whole picture to appear before one could read the line.  As a poetry competition on the subject of, yes, Spring, with illustrations, this brave effort would have been interesting, but unfortunately the “P” in RPS stands for Photography and not Poetry.   The effect on the audience (I can’t speak for the jury) of the endless repetition of the same images, music, and presentation was disastrous.

There were also 12 “independent” entries in the Junior caegory.  Most of them were original, several very much so, and a number were also impressively sophisticated.  It was therefore no surprise that the distinguished international jury awarded both the Prizes and all four Highly Commendeds in this category to sequences from these entrants.  As so often happens in AV events, the audience may not have agreed with the Jury, and a straw poll suggested that, had there been a popular vote prize, it would have gone to Jake Pursley’s sequence on Graffiti, which actually finished as one of the four HCs.

There were 6 entries in the 16-24 year old section, coming from Cyprus, Germany, and New Zealand as well as the U.K.  They were all good and distinctly original in conception, but one was absolutely outstanding:  Laura Bateman’s “Waiting for Tomorrow” was a powerful piece on the thoughts of an old man at the end of his life.  We learned later that the sequence was actually part of Laura’s degree presentation on Molière, which involved live actors, but even as it stood, it was quite good enough to enter for international festivals.

The school’s misunderstanding of the purpose of IRIS –25 must not be allowed to detract from the overall success of this new competition.  To attract a total of 18 individual entries is far in advance of previous RPS efforts in this field, and the quality in both sections was remarkable. I look forward keenly to next year’s competition.

George Pollock

June 2008