Gathering films by some of the worlds’ most talented directors and hunting out the freshest new talent. Branchage will be a banquet for all with comedy, live music, weirdly wonderful venues, parties and an entourage of filmmakers, visiting and home grown.
27/09/2012 - 30/09/2012
Branchage is a young, ambitious and imaginative film festival combining cutting-edge commissions and creative programming with all that’s charming about Jersey. The festival specialises in site-specific live sound-tracking, music and film screenings, matching each to a complementary and unusual venue on the island.
A hotbed for new talent, Branchage programmes an extensive short film strand, new independent features, industry panels, educational workshops and several parties and networking events.
www.branchagefestival.com
Branchage is an ancient hedge-cutting tradition in Jersey. It's also the name of a new film festival that's sharp and savvy. Here's a review from arts writer Lucy Sanderson.
September presents something of a cultural treat in Jersey. Following hot on the heels of the Jersey Live music festival comes the Branchage International Film Festival. It’s as hip as Hoxton, yet named after an old Jersey tradition known grandly as the ‘Visite du Branchage’, a twice-yearly haircut of the hedges in every parish on the island to ensure that foliage doesn’t spill out onto the public highway. If your hedge is judged as being too unkempt you’re in big trouble. Serious stuff.
Using a typically quirky Jersey custom as the name for a film festival conveys exactly what Branchage is all about – an unconventional and utterly unique event that attracts films and film-makers, actors and producers, artists, musicians and dancers from all over the world. But it doesn’t just celebrate film. Branchage also embraces that Jersey quirkiness, the island’s natural beauty and its compelling cultural history. The ethos of the festival is all about presenting a programme that combines the best in cutting-edge cinema with a real sense of fun and vibrancy and, importantly, community involvement.
One of the best descriptions of Branchage is from an online magazine, says it’s ‘a creative, perhaps naughty, little sister to the high-brow, critic-filled festivals such as Cannes, Venice, Toronto and London; a festival that runs wild across its island home and stays out way past its curfew.’
Branchage certainly brings with it a promise of a weekend brimming with inventiveness and eye-opening experiences. It gathers together all kinds of cinematic offerings, live scores and sound-and-light installations. But what really sets Branchage apart is the way it is staged. The festival makes full use of Jersey’s extraordinary locations and buildings, old and new. From a horsebox to an old chapel, rough-and-ready army barracks to the glittering Opera House, Branchage brings cinema and music to some of the most unlikely places (more conventionally, it also uses the island’s only multiplex cinema, Cineworld). Secret venues, chosen with a specific ambience, also appear in the programme, all part of Branchage’s manifesto to create an entire sensory indulgence.
Branchage plays to audiences
large and small
To give you a flavour of what it’s all about, here’s what happened in 2011. My first stop was the opening evening’s gala screening of Senna, the film documentary charting the life of Formula One champion Ayrton Senna, shown on a huge screen within the opulent Opera House. Earlier that day, I bumped into Manesh Pandey, the writer of the film; he was having lunch with a friend of mine who was escorting him on his trip to Jersey. That’s typical Branchage for you: it’s all hands on deck as friends of the festival become volunteers, looking after visitors and generating a true community spirit, a Branchage hallmark.
Too much Thursday night champagne and a cold, blustery Friday morning conspired to make me miss the sound installation staged at Elizabeth Castle, the huge fortress in the middle of St Aubin’s Bay, but I heard the most enthusiastic reports from friends who did. On Friday afternoon I checked out the short film offerings being screened at the headquarters of Société Jersiaise, the society that supports Jersey’s history, traditional language and heritage. This was one of the free Branchage screenings that ran throughout the day and night, inviting people to walk in off the street and take a look.
Branchage can be pretty intense, as my frantic Friday demonstrates. After watching a documentary at the Jersey Art Centre it was off to Ebenezer Church in the Parish of Trinity where I saw an unusual animation, This Side of the Moon. The live score performed alongside the screening was a real treat to the ears, bringing the story to life through the sound of a ‘psychedelic harp’ in a perfectly chosen venue whose soaring acoustics enhanced every note.
'Branchage is as much about Jersey as it is about cinema and film'
Arts writer - Lucy Sanderson