Brighton Festival 2014: 3-25 May
Ticket Office: 01273 709709
Website: brightonfestival.org
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Brighton Festival 2014 announces film programme

Brighton Festival 2014, with critically acclaimed choreographer, dancer, musician, composer and performer Hofesh Shechter as Guest Director, has launched three weeks of unrivalled arts celebration which includes Mark Cousins’ film strand Cinema of Childhood alongside choreographer Wim Vandekeybus’ Blush (12 May).

Hofesh Shechter said, 'Brighton has a magic to it that no one can explain. Finding a place where one can develop and grow artistically is a delicate thing, an important thing. Brighton Dome and Brighton Festival have been an inspiring, energising and encouraging place for my company and me in the last 5 years. We've enjoyed the buzz, the lightness, energy, and the unexplainable essence of Brighton. We have resided in its cultural heart - Brighton Dome, and the pulsating artistic heart of Brighton Dome is the annual Brighton Festival. It's been a privilege to have been part of the planning for this inspiring event and I feel a rush of excitement about sharing our programme with audiences in Brighton and beyond.'

This year's Brighton Festival features a feast of music, theatre, dance, visual art, film, literature and debate from a wide range of national and international companies and artists. 448 performances across 147 events will take place in 34 venues throughout the city and beyond. In total, the Festival will play host to 37 premieres, exclusives and co-commissions and 26 free events.

Brighton Festival 2014 - Film:

Cinema of Childhood

The acclaimed Irish director, presenter and critic Mark Cousins curates a season focusing on the depiction of children in film. Shown in the Duke of York’s Picturehouse, which was voted the best cinema in Britain in 2011, this is a life-affirming, thought-provoking feast of international cinema. The season includes:

The White Balloon

Sat 3 May

Duke of York’s Picturehouse

Jafar Panahi, 1995,Iran, 85mins

Jafar Panahi’s first feature film is a masterpiece about a little girl who won’t take no for an answer. Razieh wants a new goldfish to celebrate the Iranian New Year, and after nagging her mother she finally gets her way. But when her mother gives her the money, that’s only the start of her adventure. Utterly real and quietly hilarious, it is one of the most honest films ever made.

10 Minutes Older

Sat 3 May

Duke of York’s Picturehouse

Herz Frank, 1978, Latvia, 10 mins

Herz Frank’s seminal short film has to be seen on the big screen. Storms of emotion sweep across a child’s face as he watches a show that we never see. Ten minutes last a small lifetime, and tell us everything about why children are so mesmerized by cinema, and why cinema is so mesmerized by children.

Little Fugitive

Mon 5 May

Duke of York’s Picturehouse

Part of Cinema of Childhood

Morris Engel and Ray Ashley,1953,US, 80mins

After their mother leaves them alone in New York for the weekend, seven year-old Joey is tricked into thinking he’s killed his older brother. So he runs away to the funfair at Coney Island, to get lost in the rides and the spectacle. Film-maker Morris Engel and his team see so much in him: a cowboy, the boy in Shane, the kid in Chaplin’s The Kid. It is the first true indie movie, capturing real life wild in the streets and credited by Truffaut with inspiring the French New Wave.

Hugo and Josephine

Sat 10 May

Duke of York’s Picturehouse

Part of Cinema of Childhood

Kjell Grede, 1967,Sweden, 82mins

The lonely daughter of a rural pastor makes friends with a wild boy who lives in the woods. The mysterious giant who tends the garden seems sinister, but is really a big teddy bear. The darkness of the world beyond childhood lingers at the edge of the frame, but never intrudes. Kjell Grede delivers a Swedish summer classic, blonde and gorgeous and heart-breakingly innocent. A pure pleasure.

A Story of Children and Film

Sun 11 May

Duke of York’s Picturehouse

Part of Cinema of Childhood

Mark Cousins, 2013, UK, 104 mins

With extracts from 53 great films from 25 countries, A Story of Children and Film is the world’s first movie about kids in global cinema. It’s a personal essay by Mark Cousins exploring what cinema tells us about childhood and what childhood tells us about cinema. Featuring classics such as E.T., The Red Balloon, Frankenstein and Kes alongside a host of less well-known titles, this is a passionate, poetic portrait of the adventure of childhood: its surrealism, loneliness, fun, destructiveness and stroppiness. A celebration of both childhood and the movies.

‘…entirely distinctive, sometimes eccentric, always brilliant: a mosaic of clips, images and moments chosen with flair and grace, both from familiar sources and from the neglected riches of cinema around the world.’ The Guardian

Children in the Wind

Mon 12 May

Duke of York’s Picturehouse

Part of Cinema of Childhood

Hiroshi Shimizu,1937,Japan, 88mins

Sampei is a little rascal who leads his village gang with the Tarzan cry of his hero, Johnny Weissmuller. But when his father is falsely imprisoned for fraud, his idyllic life falls apart. Sent to stay with his uncle, Sampei runs away any chance he gets — up a tree, down the river, to the circus. If only his father can clear his name, everything will be all right again. Hiroshi Shimizu’s luminous masterpiece is nearly 80 years old, but still shines brightly.

Willow and Wind

Mon 19 May

Duke of York’s Picturehouse

Mohammad-Ali Talebi, 1999,Iran, 77mins

A school window is broken, and children can’t concentrate because the rain is getting in. The culprit isn’t allowed back into class until he mends it. He sets off to fetch a large pane of glass across the countryside. The wind blows; but will he crack? In the hands of writer Abbas Kiarostami and director Mohammad-Ali Talebi, this simplest of stories becomes an epic quest, poetic and breathtakingly beautiful. It has big-hearted humanism, but Hitchcockian tension too. An unmissable, edge-of-seat masterpiece.

Tomka and his Friends

Xhanfise Keko, 1977, Albania, 78mins

UK premiere

Sat 24 May

Duke of York’s Picturehouse

Part of Cinema of Childhood

When the Nazis occupy an Albanian village after the withdrawal of the Italian army, Tomka and his gang are furious — because the Germans set up camp on their football pitch. The local partisans recruit the boys to spy on the invaders and help to set an ambush. Who knew war could be this much fun? Albania’s greatest female director spins a classic boys’ own adventure yarn, but in a style as raw and authentic as anything from the Italian neo-realists. Never before seen in the UK and freshly restored, this is a rare discovery.

Other film offerings in Brighton Festival 2014 include:

Blush

A film by Wim Vandekeybus

Mon 12 May

Duke’s at Komedia

Alongside his work as a choreographer, Wim Vandekeybus is a bold film-maker noted for video adaptations of his stage works. This film, adapted from his 2004 performance, features music by David Eugene Edwards and Woven Hand and texts by the Flemish author Peter Verhelst. Swinging between Corsica’s sublime landscapes and Brussels’ slummiest depths, it explores the savage subconscious in dance sequences of attraction, confrontation and repulsion.

-ENDS-

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Notes To Editors:

About Brighton Festival:

  • Brighton Festival is an annual mixed arts festival which takes place across three weeks in the city each May. The festival’s total audience reach in 2013 was 470,000, including public visual art installations experienced by over 300,000 people.
  • Full programme details will be announced on Tuesday 25 February 2014.
  • Brighton Festival attracts inspiring and internationally significant Guest Director’s who bring cohesion to the artistic programme with British sculptor Anish Kapoor as inaugural curator in 2009 followed by the Godfather of modern music Brian Eno in 2010, the Burmese Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi in 2011, actress and Human Rights campaigner Vanessa Redgrave in 2012 and poet, author and former Children’s Laureate Michael Rosen in 2013.
  • Brighton Festival 2013 featured 370 performances, 154 events and 28 commissions and premieres across 33 venues in and around the city, reaching 470,000 people.
  • Brighton Festival is an innovative commissioning and producing arts festival, offering an ambitious programme that makes the most ofthe city’s distinctive atmosphere.
  • Brighton Festival is England’s most established mixed arts Festival and a major milestone in the international cultural calendar
  • Brighton Festival includes visual art, theatre, music, dance, books and debates, family friendly events and outdoor performances throughout the city including site-specific and unusual locations.
  • Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival produces the annual Brighton Festival and also manages the three venues of Brighton Dome year round. It aims to champion the power of the arts, to enrich and change lives and inspire and enable artists to be their most creative.
  • The first Brighton Festival in 1967 controversially included the first ever exhibition of Concrete Poetry in the UK, alongside performances by Lawrence Olivier, Anthony Hopkins and Yehudi Menuhin
  • Hofesh Shechter Company is a Resident Company of Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival since 2008.
  • The UK premiere of Hofesh Shechter’s new work Sun takes place at Sadler’s Wells on Wednesday 30 October 2013.
  • Sun is produced by Hofesh Shechter Company with generous support from Bruno Wang and The Columbia Foundation fund of the London Community Foundation.
  • Sun is co-commissioned by Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival, Sadler’s Wells London, Melbourne Festival, Les Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg, Théâtre de la Ville - Paris, Festspielhaus St Pölten (including a working residency), Berliner Festspiele - Foreign Affairs, Roma Europa, with co-production support from Mercat de les Flors and the Theatre Royal Plymouth.
  • Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival manages a year round programme of arts at Brighton Dome – a three space, Grade 1 listed building made up of the Concert Hall, Corn Exchange and Studio Theatre - and produces the annual Brighton Festival in May.
  • It aims to champion the power of the arts, to enrich and change lives, and to inspire and enable artists to be their most creative.
  • Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival are a registered arts charity
  • Brighton Dome & Brighton Festival are working with the Royal Pavilion & Museums on a joint masterplan to realize a future vision for the Royal Pavilion Estate. For updates and news please visit or contact to be added to our mailing list.

About Hofesh Shechter:

Hofesh Shechter is recognised as one of the UK’s most exciting artists and is renowned for composing the musical scores for his dance creations with his raw, atmospheric music complimenting his Company’s unique physicality.

Hofesh graduated from the JerusalemAcademy for Dance and Music before moving to Tel Aviv to join the world renowned Batsheva Dance Company, where he worked with artistic director Ohad Naharin and other choreographers including Wim Vandekeybus, Paul Selwyn-Norton, Tero Saarinen, and Inbal Pinto. Hofesh began drum and percussion studies whilst in Tel Aviv and continued later in Paris at the Agostiny College of Rhythm. Subsequently, he began experimenting and developing his own music while participating in various projects in Europe involving dance, theatre and body-percussion. In 2002 Hofesh arrived in the UK.

His choreographic debut, Fragments, for which he also created the score, immediately attracted international attention and in 2004 Hofesh was commissioned by The Place Prize to create the sextet, Cult. The work was one of five selected finalists and was announced winner of the Audience Choice Award. From 2004 to 2006 Hofesh was Associate Artist at The Place and was commissioned by the Robin Howard Foundation to create Uprising. The three works formed the triple bill deGENERATION, Hofesh’s first full evening of work.

In 2007 London’s three major dance venues, The Place, Southbank Centre and Sadler’s Wells, collaborated on a unique producing venture, commissioning Hofesh to create In your rooms which was presented at all three venues in 2007 and culminated in sell-out shows at Sadler’s Wells Theatre. In your rooms was nominated for a South Bank Show Award and won the Critics’ Circle Award for best choreography (modern) in 2008.

In 2008, in response to popular demand Hofesh formed Hofesh Shechter Company and the Company embarked on its first world tour and became resident at Brighton Dome. Since then the Company can be found performing throughout Europe, Asia, North America and Australia and reaching audiences in many of the world’s leading dance venues. Recent tours have included South America and the Middle East with the global appetite for Shechter’s work continuing with his later creations.

Now under the banner of Hofesh Shechter Company, in 2009 Hofesh produced his first The Choreographer’s Cut– commissioned by Sadler’s Wells and performed at The Roundhouse. He reworked his acclaimed double bill Uprising/In your rooms to feature a band of 20 musicians alongside a company of 17 dancers. Also in 2009 Hofesh was commissioned by Brighton Festival in 2009 to create the “exquisitely acrimonious” The Art of Not Looking Back (The Observer, 2009) which was inspired by and made for six female dancers alongside a major new youth work called Bangers and Mash. In May 2010 his first full-length work Political Mother, commissioned by Brighton Festival and premiered at the Brighton Festival, winning 5 star reviews from all the major national press and subsequently embarking on an extensive international tour, further cementing the Company’s reputation.

2011 saw the second time Hofesh created a ‘Choreographer’s Cut’ of his work, this time for Political Mother – the result was‘a howling beast of a dance show’ (Metro), featuring over 40 performers and which returns to Sadler’s Wells in July 2013. Shechter collaborated with Antony Gormley on Survivor commissioned by the Barbican and reaching sell-out audiences for its run in January 2012. In October 2013, Hofesh unveiled his next major creation co-produced by partners around the world and co-commissioned by Brighton Festival and on worldwide tour until the summer of 2014.

Alongside his work for Hofesh Shechter Company, Hofesh’s works have been taken into the repertory of many UK and international dance companies including Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet (New York), Carte Blanche Dance Company (Norway), Bern Ballett (Switzerland), Scottish Dance Theatre (UK) and CandoCo (UK).

He has also worked as a choreographer in theatre, television and opera notably at The Royal Court Theatre for Motortown by Simon Stephens (2006), TheArsonists (2007), and for the National Theatre’s award winning production of Saint Joan (2007) directed by Marianne Elliot and starring Anne Marie Duff. In television, Hofesh choreographed the hit dance sequence ‘Maxxie’s Dance’ for the opening of the second series of Channel 4’s popular drama Skins. In 2013 Hofesh will collaborate with Metropolitan Opera, New York.

Hofesh is an Associate Artist of Sadler’s Wells and Hofesh Shechter Company is Resident Company at Brighton Dome.