EIFF and story editor Kate Leys are proud to announce the first feature projects and filmmaking teams who will be participating in their development and mentoring programme, NETWORK.
They are:
• Writer/director Alex Smith and his adaptation A BOY NAMED KEITH
• Screenwriter Ronnie Mackintosh and his thriller BEST EVIDENCE
• Writer/director Gabriel Robertson with comedy DON’T SPEAK; SCREAM
• Producer Lili Sandelin & screenwriter Mandy Lee with their horror comedy EDINBURGH DIGEST
• Screenwriter Leigh Campbell & director Lindy Heymann with a dark Victorian adaptation, HAMMER
• Writer/director Hammad Khan with twisted contemporary fairy tale THE SILENT SUCCESSION OF QASIM ALI
• Producer Wendy Griffin and writer/director Hannah Robinson with a story of sisters, family and electricity, TESLA GIRL
• Producer Nicola Clayton a& screenwriter Mahalia Rimmer with Michel Faber adaptation THE FAHRENHEIT TWINS
• Filmmaker Sam Firth with a documentary filmed as fiction, THE STORY OF ME AND YOU
Further details:
A BOY NAMED KEITH Alexander Smith (Writer/Director)
Set in 1976, A Boy Named Keith is a rites of passage story framed as a pitch black comedy set in the US and adapted from the memoirs of Keith Fleming. Keith is a wry 16 year old, trapped in the mid-West with self-absorbed parents who behave more like teenagers than he does. Disturbed by his increasing exasperation they commit him to a brutal adolescent mental hospital. He escapes to Manhattan where his life is literally saved by his uncle, writer Edmund White. Keith soon finds himself transformed as Uncle Ed instructs his nephew in a worldly view of life and love; everything seems to fall into place when wayward, beautiful Laura from the hospital turns up to fall in love with him. Meanwhile, Uncle Ed is both strapped for cash and completely caught up in the beehive of social and sexual activity of 1970s gay Manhattan.
This is a story full of fascinating characters and unexpected twists – at once an odyssey into the extremes of the American 1970s, a universal tale of star-crossed teenage love, and an account of a deeply sensitive young person’s struggle to find his place in the world.
London-born Alex Smith is a director and screenwriter. As a music video and commercials director he is currently signed to Pulse Films in the UK.
BEST EVIDENCE Ronnie Mackintosh (Screenwriter)
A contemporary thriller, Best Evidence tells the story of a disgraced former police detective who is drawn back into a world he’s long since left behind. Held responsible for the death of a friend and finally called to account on a promise made years before, now he will be forced to face his worst fears as he fights to get the better of a twisted, dying killer.
Ronnie Mackintosh is a former Detective Chief Inspector with the Lothian & Borders Police and a MFA graduate of the Screen Academy Scotland. His produced credits include four short films, all of which have been screened at several international film festivals, and a stage play.
DON’T SPEAK; SCREAM Gabriel Robertson (Writer/Director)
A wry contemporary comedy, Don’t Speak; Scream tells the story of Scott, a socially inept familiaphobic who finds himself trapped at his ex-girlfriend’s family reunion and must overcome his deepest fears to learn that sometimes family can be worth the hassle.
Gabriel Robertson is an award winning writer and director. He has written for TV including RIVER CITY and EASTENDERS and on productions for Shed and Blindside. He has directed for producers including Talkback Thames, Firstlight and The Comedy Unit; he’s also written and directed for the stage, been a production intern at C4 and assistant produced a wide range of community film projects.
EDINBURGH DIGEST Lili Sandelin (Producer) & Mandy Lee (Screenwriter)
Edinburgh Digest is a contemporary horror comedy. As the annual Edinburgh Festival expands into more and more new venues, life in the Old Town’s underground world becomes increasingly cramped for the last surviving family of old-school Scottish cannibals. In order to survive the dysfunctional clan has no choice but to embrace the madness of the festival, but their deliberately low-key, ramshackle show becomes an unwanted success and threatens to expose their dark secrets once and for all.
Lili Sandelin has been a producer at North Isle Productions Ltd since 2007. Originally from Finland, her credits include documentaries, short films, music videos and promos. She graduated from Bournemouth Film School after studying editing, and from Screen Academy Scotland as a producer.
Mandy Lee is a writer and screenwriter. Trained as an artist, she graduated from Edinburgh College of Art as a text-based jeweller before realising that words were becoming more important to her than metalwork. She studied screenwriting at Screen Academy Scotland, where she met her producer Lili, and has since written short films, radio drama, short stories and had her first short play staged. She is currently developing two features: the second, Masterbaker, on a Playwrights’ Studio Scotland Screenwriting Residency where she is working with the Binger Film Lab.
HAMMER Leigh Campbell (Screenwriter) & Lindy Heymann (Director)
From the award-winning team behind 2009’s Kicks, Hammer is an adaptation of a novel by Sara Stockbridge. Andy Stebbing is attached to produce.
A blistering tale of lust and burglary set in nineteenth-century Whitechapel, the film tells the story of feisty but good hearted pickpocket Grace Hammer who lives in London’s dank and dirty East End. Unbeknown to Grace, her most audacious crime is about to leap seventeen years and come back into her life in the worst possible way. Out in the dark countryside Mr Blunt rocks in his chair, grinding his teeth and vowing furious retribution. He has never forgotten his scarlet treasure, or the harlot that stole it from him. At night he dreams of slitting her lily-white throat…
Leigh Campbell has written shorts, features and a radio drama. At EIFF 2009 her feature debut Kicks was nominated for the Michael Powell award and Leigh was presented with a Trailblazer award. In the same year Leigh was nominated for Best Newcomer at LFF.
Lindy Heymann won Best Directorial Debut at the British Independent Film Awards with her debut feature Showboy and as well as Kicks has directed over a hundred music promos.
THE SILENT SUCCESSION OF QASIM ALI Hammad Khan (Writer/Director)
This film tells the extraordinary, personal and entirely true story of a modern young man living a middle class, urban life in central Islamabad who one day suddenly realises he has inherited the throne of a remote Himalayan Princely State. From idly wondering whether or not to upgrade his iPhone he is catapulted into a lavish coronation and a series of urgent questions. How will he lead 100,000 people? What will he do to help preserve their ancient language? And how can he come to terms with the sudden loss of a father whose early death has put him here? Shot using a mixture of documentary and fiction techniques, early no-budget filming on Qasim Ali will start in March 2012.
Hammad Khan is the London-based filmmaker behind the festival-hopping indie youth film Slackistan, banned in Pakistan where it was shot. His day job is at the BBFC where he sees more films than everyone else has cups of coffee.
TESLA GIRL Wendy Griffin (Producer) & Hannah Robinson (Writer/Director)
Two sisters face financial chaos caused by their increasingly senile father. For obsessive problem-solver Julie, back in her home town to sort things out, it’s clear they should sell the house. Eccentric but brilliant scientist Connie, however, has stayed at home and won’t budge. She rarely leaves the house and instead has devoted her life to building an ‘energy harvesting machine’ after the work of real scientist Nikola Tesla. She’s convinced that this will change the world and earn their fortunes, but to Julie it looks like madness in the garage. Battling for control, they learn that the transference of power doesn’t always flow so smoothly.
Wendy Griffin began her career making short films, then moved on to become a line producer in both film and TV. She recently produced her first feature Wasted and is presently working with Synchronicity Films as an independent producer.
Hannah Robinson is a Scottish screenwriter and director with a raft of prize winning feature scripts and short films to her credit, including the American Screenwriters Association Grand Prize.
THE FAHRENHEIT TWINS Nicola Clayton (Producer) & Mahalia Rimmer (Screenwriter)
Based on a short story by Michel Faber, The Fahrenheit Twins is a coming of age story of identical twins who live at the icy zenith of the world with their anthropologist parents. When their mother dies the twins set out across the arctic tundra on a husky-drawn sledge in search of a suitable resting place for her body.
Nicola Clayton is based in the Midlands and has been developing and producing fiction and creative documentary films with emerging British talent for 9 years.
An NFTS MA Screenwriting graduate, Mahalia Rimmer has written stage plays, award- winning short films and TV drama and is developing features with Vertigo and Optimism.
THE STORY OF ME AND YOU Sam Firth (Writer/Director)
The Story of Me and You is an offbeat documentary that will use fiction film making techniques to tell a story about the nature of memory, family stories and objective truth. It explores these ideas by taking the collected memories of Sam’s own family and illustrating them playfully with reconstructed ‘home movies’ using super 8 film. The film is an attempt to pull together the pieces of a fragmented family and construct a family album that celebrates the contradictions, diverging stories, and misremembered events that form the wonderfully messy whole.
Sam Firth lives in the Highlands of Scotland and works both in documentary and fiction with films that often explore the relationship between the two. She is currently working on a low budget film that documents every day of her life in the same frame for a year, which means that she cannot leave her remote but stunningly beautiful home so she is keeping herself busy writing and developing this project and other screenplays.
