GUIDE: What to watch during the film festival

Thursday 23 May 2024

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As this year's film festival rolls into action, Express has put together a handy guide to help you pick the hits you won't want to miss...

The 13th Parish Film Festival, taking place at the Jersey Arts Centre from 23 to 26 May, aims to showcase the best of independent global and local cinema.

The event, which began five years ago, will showcase international short films, documentaries, and features of various genres, from thought-provoking to funny and thrilling, spanning a range of languages, themes, and cultural backgrounds.

Pictured: The organisers of Jersey’s grassroots film festival revealed their full programme earlier this month.

While work from festivals such as Venice and Sundance gives the event a distinctly international feel, the festival also has an important local focus, giving filmmakers from Jersey the chance to make and showcase their own work.

One of the most innovative events of the festival will be when walls around St Helier are transformed into temporary cinema screens.

The grassroots festival will also feature a virtual reality experience, interviews with figures from the film industry like Hollywood director John Schultz and Jersey filmmaker Rebecca Coley, and a showcase from a DIY filmmaking workshop. 

Express has compiled a handy guide to all the events...

Thursday Evening | International Shorts 1 | Jersey Arts Centre | 20:30

The festival is kicking off with a collection of award-winning international short films from countries including Portugal, France, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, and the UK.

• Ticker (UK, 2023, 9 mins): A touching story about a couple's journey to the hospital for a high-risk operation. 
• The Garbage Man (Portugal, 2022, 11 mins): A family reminisces about an uncle's life, work and experience of warfare. 
• Portrait of a Disappearing Woman (France, 2023, 20 mins): A fishmonger leaves her mundane life for a new adventure.
• The Un-Chaotic Cabinet That Wishes For Me To Sleep (Ireland, 2022, 7 mins): A young man searches for clarity and self-identity in Dublin.
• Madden (Sweden, 2023, 13 mins): A story about duty, longing, and personal connections in Sweden. 
• Heart Fruit (Switzerland, 2022, 20 mins): Late summer heats up in a city where people search for their own form of love
• The Pink Jacket (Portugal, 2022, 8 mins): A political musical about a jacket that symbolises resistance.

Friday Afternoon | International Shorts 2 | Jersey Arts Centre | 14:00

Islanders can enjoy a selection of youth-driven, experimental, and creative short films at the second international short film showing. 

Friday Afternoon | Feature Film - Mountain Onion | Jersey Arts Centre | 16:15

• Mountain Onion (Kazakhstan, 2022, 90 mins): This debut feature follows young Jabai selling mountain onions alongside the highway as he tries to save his parent's marriage in a madcap dash to China

Viewers can celebrate local talent with films from Jersey and from across the water. 

• Au Moulîn (Jersey, 2024, 6 mins): A morning in the year 1861 at the old Quetivel Mill in Jersey, inspired by the Hawkins family who used to live and work there in Victorian times.
• The Seaflower Venture  (Jersey, 2024, 8 mins): A historical piece about a prominent Jersey cod merchant.
• The One (UK/Jersey, 2023, 4 mins): A music video by Áine Rose Daly.
• Bus (Australia/Jersey, 2024, 3 mins): A sombre, heartfelt, observation of the loops we can all become trapped in a music-video collaboration between singer Phoebe Over and Axon Bower.
  The Lost Dreams (Jersey/UK, 2024, 9 mins): An experimental film on loss and resilience.
• Featherless (UK, 2023, 11 mins): A young girl's quest for survival in a correctional facility.
• Born of Water (Guernsey, 2023, 16 mins): A mother's fight for survival during a raid on her island in 1372. 
• Usurp the Destroyer (UK, 2023, 16 mins): A couple's life is upended by a unique decision.

 Friday Evening | A Wall is a Screen | West’s Centre  | 21:15

Saturday Morning | International Shorts 3 | Jersey Arts Centre | 10:00

From AI to the beauty of 35mm, and ending with a master treatise on therapeutic filmmaking – this final shorts selection explores loss, memory and survival.

• My Soul Walks With You (Ireland, 2022, 7 mins): AI-generated imagery set to music.
• The Countryman (USA, 2023, 21 mins): Bitterness threatens to destroy a small farming community until a stranger arrives with a curious proposition.
• Mar Mama (Palestine, 2023, 15 mins): A girl's obsession with death and her father's efforts to distract her.
• Montreal In Half (France, 2024, 12 mins): A couple's decision to avoid each other in Montreal.
• The Lovers (Sweden, 2023, 12 mins): A relationship horror-comedy.
• Neighbour Abdi (Netherlands, 2022, 29 mins): A reenactment of a violent past in Somalia

Saturday Midday | In Conversation with John Schultz | Jersey Arts Centre | 12:15

A Hollywood director who has worked for studios including Netflix, Paramount, and Disney is set to feature on the programme of the grassroots film festival.

Hollywood director John Schultz will be conversation with 13th Parish Art Director Steve Carter on Saturday 25 May.

Mr Schultz, known for documentaries like 'The Making of Jurassic Park' and feature films like 'Bandwagon', relocated to the island in 2021 and is currently working on a supernatural thriller inspired by Jersey legends.

Saturday Afternoon | Film Workshop | Jersey Arts Centre | 14:00

Islanders can watch and discuss collaborative short films made during a DIY filmmaking workshop in France.

A free one-week filmmaking course was offered earlier this month, courtesy of a team of cinematic professionals from the Off-Courts Trouville Film Festival in France.

Participants were taken through all the steps needed to make their film, allowing them to develop their short films from concept to completion in a fun, supportive and collaborative environment. 

Saturday Afternoon | Feature Film - Call Me Mule | Jersey Arts Centre | 16:00

• Call Me Mule (USA, 2023, 77 mins): A feisty elderly man travelling with three mules struggles against the authorities to maintain his nomadic lifestyle in the American West

Saturday Evening | Feature Film - Focus on Quebec | Jersey Arts Centre | 18:15

• Un trou dans la poitrine (2023, 11 mins): Zoe and her brother Theo confront their strained relationship in a rundown neighbourhood.
• Aska (2021, 14 mins): Two sisters embark on a pilgrimage in Iceland to appease a volcano. 
• Fauve (2018, 16 mins): two boys play a power game in a surface mine. 
• Le Temple (The Temple) (2022, 17 mins): A German crew experiences madness as their submarine sinks.
• Le Temps Des Bouffons (1993, 15 mins): A satirical film about the Canadian bourgeoisie's colonial celebrations.
• Lespouére (2013, 20 mins): A portrait of activist Bilbo Cyr, who uses poetry to defend his region passionately.

Saturday Evening | Feature Film - The Trouble With Jessica | Jersey Arts Centre | 20:15

• The Trouble With Jessica (UK, 2023, 90 mins): A dark comedy about relationship troubles and financial worries. 

Sunday Midday | In Conversation with Jersey Film Maker | Jersey Arts Centre | 12:15

Jersey filmmaker Rebecca Coley, who recently won awards at festivals around the world for her surf documentary, will host a talk on her career and current projects.

Sunday Afternoon | Feature Film - Everybody Wants To Be Loved | Jersey Arts Centre | 14:00

• Everybody Wants To Be Loved (Germany, 2022, 80 mins): A blisteringly hot summer day. Psychotherapist Ina notices something is wrong with her. But she doesn’t have time to worry about it. Ina wants to please everyone. But then everything changes.

Sunday Afternoon | Celebrating the Carnation Revolution | Jersey Arts Centre | 16:15

The 13th Parish International Film Festival has partnered with the Portuguese Short Film Agency Agencia to bring a series of short films to the Jersey Arts Centre on Sunday that celebrates the 50th anniversary of Portuguese democracy.

The Portuguese programme  – entitled 'Celebrating the Carnation Revolution' – will mark half a century since the Carnation Revolution which ended Europe's longest fascist dictatorship and led Portugal to democracy. 

The film series will offer an overview of how the Estado Novo regime, the Colonial War, and the 1974 Revolution have been depicted in Portuguese cinema.

It covers themes of resistance, fascism, and the memories and traumas of the colonial war. 

The films include a political musical called ‘The Pink Jacket’, and a film about a young housewife called ‘Menina’ set in Lisbon in 1971. 

Sunday Evening | Feature Film - We Are Guardians | Jersey Arts Centre | 18:15

• We Are Guardians (Brazil, 2023, 82 mins): A documentary on the fight to protect the Amazon Rainforest.

Sunday Evening |  Closing Feature Film - Omen - and Festival Awards | Jersey Arts Centre | 20:30

• Omen (Belgium/DR Congo, 2023, 90 mins): A visually captivating film about identity, culture, and belief systems in Kinshasa.

Saturday 25 May and Sunday 26 May  |  VR Exhibition | Jersey Arts Centre | 

The success of last year’s virtual reality element – in which VR headsets allowed audiences to be transported to the highest peaks of Mount Everest in a climbing documentary – means that the technology will again return.

Islanders can experience cutting-edge VR films that blend mindfulness, meditation, and interactive storytelling by artist David Lobser.

David Lobser is a mixed-reality artist who crafts immersive therapeutic experiences blending mindfulness, meditation, and psychological flow.  He teaches art, animation, and virtual reality at Harvard and New York University.

As an artist-in-residence at NYU’s Future Reality Lab, he created pieces that let multiple users interact in shared virtual spaces.

His recent work focuses on therapeutic uses for VR, such as breath work and ketamine infusion therapy, and on using new AI tools to create music videos, immersive environments, and customised meditations

You can read the full programme at 13thparish.org.je.

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