ShAFF Quality Control
23rd Jan 2015
This is ShAFF's 10th year. Every year we publically announce that this year's line up is bigger and better than ever before. It's one of those statements that I feel a little uncomfortable stating out loud as it's so easy to do. It's easy enough to count up the total number and raise it a little from year to year, but how do you quantify a better line up of films for example? Well this year, to celebrate our ten years we're putting on a special 2 hour loop over ShAFF weekend featuring one classic film from each year. This has meant a deal of scrutiny over the previous film programmes to select a balanced mix. It has also demonstrated to me how much the event has grown and matured over the years. It started out life as a series of screenings of 'Best Of' programmes from other festivals - Kendal, Banff and Telluride. Somebody else was selecting which films we screened, and rather crucially, somebody who didn't know the Sheffield / British audience. Ten years on and we are now inundated with film submissions (partly due to the fact that we remain one of the only mainstream festival to not charge filmmakers submission fees), and live in an age of constant bombardment of short films and trailers on-line, many of which we chase down to include in the programme. The result? You guessed it. A bigger and better programme than ever. Only this time I say it hand on heart.
If you can't wait for March 20th when the curtains open on #ShAFF10 then you can get yourself down to the Showroom Cinema on Feb 2nd and / or March 2nd for to of the best Best Of ShAFF (2014) programmes I've had the privilege of putting together over the ten years. Tickets are on sale now via the Showroom box Office.