Holmfirth Film Festival

The HFF has received some very welcome offers of help from people in the Valley and beyond. What has been particularly gratifying is that they include people working in the film industry, making and directing films and a number exhibiting and promoting film. They all have valuable experience that the HFF will put to good use. We have also had offers of help from people who simply have a deep interest in film and want to help in any way they can. All are welcome and if you want to join us and help with any aspect of the organising please contact us via the website and come along to one of our regular meetings in Holmfirth.

The HFF is in the process of raising funds for the Festival. If you have any ideas with regard to suitable funding bodies or businesses that might like to sponsor a particular event, please let us know. We want to promote the town of Holmfirth and the surrounding area to a wider world, and involve the local community as much as possible.

Many of you may have read the article, reproduced here, from the Huddersfield Daily Examiner on August 20th. If you missed it, read on…

Click here for the original

Step aside Cannes as Holmfirth Film Festival plans revealed
Aug 20 2009 By Nick Lavigueur

STEP aside Cannes, Venice and Sundance.

Holmfirth – the true home of movies – is set to launch its own film festival.

The Holme Valley town was at the forefront of the silent movie industry when local photographer James Bamforth began to produce short films in the late 19th Century.

Now, more than a century later, film fans are set to roll out the red carpet and launch a glittering new week-long festival.

The event, running from May 22 to 29 next year, will centre on the Holmfirth Picturedrome, an important monument to the silent era that once made Holmfirth Britain’s answer to Hollywood.

Organiser, Stephen Dorril, said he was surprised there wasn’t a festival already considering the area’s rich history of film and TV.

Mr Dorril, who is the film journalism course leader at Huddersfield University, said there would be a day of Bamforth’s films and a day dedicated to Huddersfield’s most famous theatrical son, Hollywood star James Mason. He said: “Obviously Holmfirth is an important aspect of British film history.

“It was right there at the beginning as one of the first film studios. “The festival will have a northern flavour but we will also be showing some new international films.

“And we’re also going to link up with the Huddersfield Literature Festival and get some of the script writers involved.”

Huddersfield University’s music school students are planning to compose their own movie sound tracks.

The inaugural festival will close with a gala ball and celebrities will be invited.

Ideas for 2011 are already being thrown about, including a day devoted to Mirfield star Patrick Stewart.

The event is a far cry from only two years ago when the Picturedrome almost became a pub and costs forced owner Peter Carr to stop showing films.

But with just over nine months to go, organisers are now seeking film enthusiasts who would like to be involved with the festival.

Contact: info@holmfirthfilmfestival.co.uk or www.holmfirthfilmfestival.co.uk

Fact file: a brief history of Holmfirth film makers Bamforth’s

• Bamforth’s were the Holme Valley’s silent film pioneers ahead of the Hollywood studios
• James Bamforth started in 1870 as a studio photographer and began the production of magic lantern slides around 1883 before moving into moving pictures.
• He mostly produced slapstick and humorous films at his Station Road base over two brief periods, 1898-1900 and 1913-1915.
• In all, 125 films were made before the First World War halted European distribution, took away many of their actors and led to a shortage of the chemicals needed to develop the films.
• Bamforths never resumed their film ambitions, switching to postcard production.
• By the end of the war Hollywood was well established, but Holmfirth was on its way to obscurity.
• A later generation of the family destroyed much of its film history, leaving present-day historians with only a partial but tantalising glimpse of this early potential.

There’s no publicity like free publicity. With this in mind, we now have a group on the Facebook social-networking site. If any of you are Facebook members, please join us here.

Following the last meeting I had a suggestion that we could make use of another web based resource to keep on top of festival organisation. Following this, I’ve set up a new network at holmfirthfilmfestival.ning.com which will allow invited users to keep up to date with happenings and to share information more easily.

If you’re involved in the festival organisation and you’ve had an invitation email, please sign up. If you are involved but haven’t had your invite, get in touch with us on info@holmfirthfilmfestival.co.uk and we’ll sort something out for you.