A quick update on our 2011 successes as we look forward to CFF 2012.

	Admissions up 20%! 2011′s Cambridge Film Festival didn’t disappoint, with a packed programme as usual, some fantastic guests, and even better, hundreds of new faces! We’re looking forward to improving further this year – any profit remaining after paying for staff, films, events and overheads goes straight into the budget for 2012.
	Accolades for Festival Films Complimenting the Programmers of the Cambridge Film Festival, several key features from this year’s Festival are continuing to achieve great success, with TINKER TAILOR SOLIDER SPY, DRIVE, THE HELP, TYRANNOSAUR, and MYSTERIES OF LISBON all up for awards from the London Critics’ Circle. This is after several of the above won awards at the British Independent Film Awards earlier last month. Directors Tomas Alfredson (Tinker Tailor), Nicholas Winding Refn (Drive), and Paddy Considine (Tyrannosaur) all attended the 2011 Festival to speak to Cambridge audiences.
	Festive films poll Newsletter subscribers were invited to cast their votes. You can see the results on our homepage (on the right hand side – scroll down!). Subscribe to our newsletter here.

We would like to wish all our supporters and fans of the CFF best wishes for 2012!
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The Cambridge Film Trust is a registered charity.

Thanks to funding from Legacy Trust UK, an independent charity set up to help build a lasting cultural and sporting legacy from the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, we’ve been able to share our expertise in programming, organising and marketing film events with 25 young people from across the East Of England since 2010.  Earlier this year the Screen Team helped out behind the scenes – and screens – of ambitious events such as Films in the Forest , White Water Cinema and Movies on Grantchester Meadows. 

Next up is a very special indoor event which will take place in the atmospheric surroundings of a truly splendid location in Bedfordshire in February 2012… watch this space for more information.  Later in 2012 our screens will be popping-up at outdoor locations in Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Essex and the East Midlands – all with the help of a brand new intake of young volunteers.     

In the meantime have a look at the full Screen Team 2011 round-up here.   

Friday 23 Sep – Saturday 24 Sep – Sunday 25 Sep

Sun 25 Sep at 8.15pm @ Arts Picturehouse
With our SURPRISE MOVIE screening at 6pm on Sunday having already sold out, the Festival Director has just announced an additional, brand new secret treat which will screen at 8.15pm on Sunday. You know the score – we won’t reveal anything at all about this film until the opening credits roll, but rest assured this is a hot ticket and you’ll be amongst the first in the UK to see it! This will be a completely different film to the 6pm Surprise Film, so if you’ve already bought tickets for that why not double your fun and sign up for a second filmic surprise too?

FAMILY FILM FESTIVAL CLOSING WEEKEND TREATS

Saturday: OCTONAUTS @ 10.15am  / THE GRUFFALO @ 11am / family -friendly shorts SPRITES 10 @ 11.30am

Sunday: MR BENN, BAGPUSS, CLANGERS and IVOR THE ENGINE go TO INFINITY – AND BEYOND! @ 10.30am

To top it all off…

The man whose imagination conceived intrepid, dance-obsessed gumshoe Rajesh Ji and his motley band of helpers on unpredictable investigations across Kolkata and India is now bracing himself for an informative Q&A session right after tonight’s screening of his Sundance and Berlin hit doc THE BENGALI DETECTIVE. Phil Cox is here, and yes, we’re well excited! Are you?

Surprise Film 2 - Sunday 25th September 2011 – 8.15pm - Suggested certificate 15

TARTAN FILMS fans should also come by at the Picturehouse to see critically acclaimed Donald Cammell’s Wild Side screening on Wed 21 Sep at 11pm.

Eccentric and flamboyant, McAlpine was an adventurous distributor with a taste that ranged from the best US independent cinema to turn-of-the-century pornography (THE GOOD OLD NAUGHTY DAYS) to films about serial killers (ED GEIN, TED BUNDY) and classic European arthouse cinema (Tartan has released far more Ingmar Bergman titles on DVD than any Swedish distributor). He championed free speech, constantly jousting with the BBFC over ratings for films such as THE PORNOGRAPHER and THE ISLE. He was pioneering in introducing British cinemagoers to the work of Asian directors like Park Chan-wook, Wong Kar-wai and Kim Ki-duk.” Geoffrey Macnab, The Guardian

Few independent film distribution companies make a name for themselves – one that is remembered and recognised – but before it folded in 2008, Tartan Films had achieved that honour – largely due to the bold and unorthodox leadership of Hamish McAlpine. A man with an uncanny eye for a great film, who established Tartan’s reputation as a the distributor of great arthouse and horror cinema, he also allegedly dressed up as Béatrice Dalle when the French actress failed to turn up to a press junket, and held a knife at the throat of a US executive in order to demonstrate that film was ‘a cut-throat business’.

To get the inside story, join us on Thu 22 Sep at 8pm @ Arts Picturehouse as the enfant terrible himself talks with Guardian film critic Peter Bradshaw for one night only!

To celebrate its 10th anniversary this year, we are taking a retrospective look at the work of one of the biggest inspirations for young filmmakers, Lucian Pintilie: en par with France’s Godard or Sweden’s Bergman, who has chosen three of his own films especially for Cambridge Film Festival.

In addition, actress Anamaria Marinca (4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS) is showing three of her most favourite “New Wave” films and will be attending the festival for a public talk. In order to fast forward and give a glimpse of what you should watch out for, we are also presenting a short film programme full of promising new directors.

The lineup also includes three films by director Lucian Pintilie, who started with SUNDAY AT SIX in 1965 and “came to embody Romanian cinema almost by himself, before a young generation – which he helped hatch – started drawing the attention of the world” (Michel Clement).

THE OAK 
Romania, 1992, 105 mins
Wednesday 21 September, 15:00 and Sunday 25 September, 10.15 @ Arts Picturehouse Cambridge
THE OAK was made after a 20 year ban, in which Pintilie was not allowed to make films. In 1989, having just lost her father, Nela decides to go and teach in a small provincial town. There she meets Mitica, a doctor at the hospital who, like her, no longer believes in either God or man, and who shares her salutary humour. But the couple stirs up bad feelings.

AFTERNOON OF A TORTURER
 Romania, 2001, 80 mins
Thursday 22 September, 12:45 @ Arts Picturehouse Cambridge

“This was the first time I tried to make a film with the ambition of triggering a moral electroshock. (…) THE AFTERNOON OF A TORTURER is a film about the total incapacity of Romanians to confess and repent.” – Lucian Pintilie
In Romania, Frant Tandara, a former torturer in the prisons of the Communist regime, is ready to confess his crimes to a journalist and former political prisoner.

NIKI AND FLO Romania, 2003, 99 mins

Saturday 24 September, 15:15 @ Arts Picturehouse Cambridge
“NIKI AND FLO is a very dear film of mine. Maybe because it’s my last film, in every way, or maybe, who knows, my first film in a different kind of accounting?” – Lucian Pintilie
Angela and her husband have decided to leave Romania for a life in the United States. Niki, Angela’s father, is torn between his wish to see his daughter happy and his desire to have her close by. Meanwhile, Flo, the father of Niki’s son-in-law and a kind of domestic tyrant, slowly exerts control over Niki. The script was written by Cristi Puiu (STUFF AND DOUGH, THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU).

Three Films Selected by actress ANAMARIA MARINCA
Before her breathtaking performance in 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS (2008) Anamaria Marinca played roles in SEX TRAFFIC (2004) and YOUTH WITHOUT YOUTH (2007). She has since performed on the London stage, at the Young Vic and National Theatre, and has appeared in BOOGIE, THE COUNTESS, STORM, FIVE MINUTES OF HEAVEN and many more.

STUFF AND DOUGH Romania, 2001, 91 mins
Thursday 22 September, 18:00 @ Arts Picturehouse Cambridge
STUFF AND DOUGH follows a young man who is given a suspiciously large amount of money and only four hours to deliver a bag of “medical goods”. Directed by Cristi Puiu (who went on to make the internationally acclaimed THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU), it marked the beginning of the New Wave and an exciting decade of cinematic goods.

THE PAPER WILL BE BLUE Romania, 2006, 95 mins
Friday 23 September, 13:30 @ Arts Picturehouse Cambridge
Set during the confusing night of 22 December 1989, when Ceausescu was about to fall after decades of harsh dictatorship. The original inspiration for the film was a tragic incident that received considerable media attention, in which two armoured squads of Interior Ministry troops who went to protect a military unit were accidentally butchered. Director Radu Muntean (BOOGIE, TUESDAY AFTER CHRISTMAS) creates a highly unusual, personal view of those days.

OCCIDENT Romania, 2002, 99 mins
Friday 23 September, 20:30 @ Arts Picturehouse Cambridge
A rare chance to see the debut feature by Cristian Mungiu (who made the groundbreaking 4 MONTHS, 3 WEEKS, 2 DAYS starring Anamaria Marinca), which premiered in Cannes in 2002. This tragicomedy is set in post-Ceausescu Romania, where the destinies of several people cross – a couple going through a crisis, a young woman seeking a husband in Italy and a police officer on the verge of retirement.

ROMANIAN NEW WAVE SHORTS 
Saturday 24 September, 18:00 @ Arts Picturehouse Cambridge
• STRUNG LOVE by Victor Dragomir
May 1984. Viorel – a nerd from the smithing class of a communist industrial high-school – enters a rivet-production contest hoping to win the attention and affection of Ileana – a schoolmate from the sewing class.
• MUSIC IN THE BLOOD by Alexandru Mavrodineanu 
Petre is convinced that his son is very gifted, but the Gipsy music business is very tough.
• THE COUNTING DEVICE by Daniel Sandu
Mircea, a long-time employee of the National Company of Motorways and National Roads, brings along his nephew George, an educated but jobless young man, in order to introduce him to his boss in the hopes of getting him a job at the same company.
• STOPOVER by Ioana Uricaru
Ingrid, a beautiful and cosmopolitan Romanian woman, is travelling by plane returning to her home in Oslo. During a short layover at the Malpensa airport in Milan, she realizes her wallet is gone.
• OXYGEN by Adina Pintilie
Some time during the communist dictatorship in Romania, a man tries to cross the Danube illegally using an oxygen cylinder.

The Romanian programme in the Cambridge Film Festival was made possible with the assistance of The Ratiu Foundation and the Romanian Cultural Centre, London as well as the Romanian Film Centre, Bucharest with the support of Alina Salcudeadu and Mihai Chirilov.

We’ve also had a range of fantastic visiting filmmakers and Q&A sessions – perhaps most notably Jos Stelling from the Netherlands, who has garnered a bit of a fanbase amongst CFF audiences as a result! The good news for those who’ve missed out on a lot so far: there are another 5 days of unique opportunities to go, enough to squeeze in a lot of films, Q&As, workshops, and some drinks at the bar with visiting filmmakers to include:

Director of RESISTANCE Amit Gupta and author Owen Sheers
Director of AS IF I AM NOT THERE Juanita Wilson
Writer and co-producer of A BOATLOAD OF WILD IRISHMEN Brian Winston
Actors of DIMENSIONS: A LINE, A LOOP, A TANGLE OF THREAD Henry Lloyd Hughes, Sean Hart Edward Halsted, Camilla Rutherford and Patrick Godfrey

…and many more!

Announcements
There have been a lot of Programme updates today, with a few second chance screenings announced – view all here.
View FILMS & EVENTS for Tuesday 20th
View FILMS & EVENTS for Wednesday 21st

Due to public demand we’ve added another screening of  OCTONAUTS – EXPLORE! RESCUE! PROTECT! at 10.15am, followed by THE GRUFFALO at 11.00am, and onedotzero’s SPRITES 10 screens at 11.30am.

All screenings are preceeded with colouring-in activities in the kiosk area beforehand.  And with child tickets only £4 (£3 for members of the Arts Picturehouse’s Kids Club) and accompanying adults only £2 it’s an affordable way to share the magic of movie-going with your family.