Isle of Man Film Festival has sent Dave Armstrong Festival Director on a mission to Shetland Screenplay Festival which does have some similarities to our Festival such as it’s set on a beautiful island, it continues to develop and grow year on year and is also curated by Film Critic Mark Kermode. Here is Dave’s 1st blog post of the journey there and first impressions.
“Although I could have got angry with a ‘nameless’ airline, to be fair, they helped rescue the trip when my flight out
of the Island was delayed. Takes THREE flights to get to Shetland and instead of 9 hours it took about 26! But, they eventually got me to Edinburgh and into a hotel last night, even though the plane could have turned back on approach, but fortunately the 3 and half yards of visibility allowed the pilot to avoid any low flying sheep with the prerequisite margin of error! It was all worth it as I am now finally in Lerwick.
A bit bleak in the mist, but staggering scenery juxtaposed with a complete mix of semi derelict buildings, new nordic-looking houses, quaint Jurbyesque convenience shops, hand written signs telling me that there will be a Chinese night at some hall somewhere and lots of sheep. And space.
Great welcome & nice to meet the team at the festival HQ: the waterside Mareel building where all of the screenings take place. Joe Christie didn’t take much persuasion to swap the posed photo for a IOMFF ET badge!
Amazingly he and friend Cara started to dance spontaneously. Happy people, happy festival. Kathy Hubbard the Festival Director is a little more exhausted and is looking forward to it all being over on Monday! I can empathise with her.
I am looking forward to meeting up with Mark Kermode and I have got tickets for a few screenings already (a few were ready to sell out!) First up is the very popular 4 minute Wonders-90 minutes of Home Made movies- Then this evening I am going to see An Adventure in Space and Time with a Mark Gatiss Q&A.
As excited as I am to be here, sadly, duty calls, and I am off to work for a few hours on Isle of Man Film Festival material. Back to planet Manx.
I’ll report later following the screenings….”