It’s been a while since we went to a Film Devour film festival. Two years to be precise. You can read our last review here. For those who don’t know:

The FILM DEVOUR short film festival is committed to showing the best in local raw talent and creating a platform through which film makers can show off their stuff, meet other film makers and co-ordinate ideas.

As a part of Belfast Film Festival, Film Devour 13 was held in the Black Box last night (31st March) and was host to 20 of Northern Ireland’s finest short films. Doors opened at 7pm, but at around 6.30pm there was already a queue forming outside the doors. After paying the £4 door tax, we were given a leaflet with the names of the films that we were about to see and on the back there was space to vote for our favourite one.

Film Devour 13For a Monday night, the place was absolutely packed,  there wasn’t a free seat available so we were sure that we were in for a treat. The night was very well organised and the showing was split into two halves, with ten films each half. Films ranged anywhere from two minutes to ten minutes, so this wasn’t as arduous as it sounds.

Highlights from the first half were The Little Witch, directed by Alasdair McBroom – a two minute horror story which is visual stunning, Into the Firedirected by Mark Curran – a silent film which had the perfect balance of humour and old timey style, and Hoplophobia, directed by Brian Mulholland – a very funny comedy about a hitman which won the Audience Choice award!

Film Devour 13

The second half was just as good as the first with highlights including, our very own Chris Caldwell’s 6 Shooter – a tense horror, Becoming Bollywooddirected by Ryan Ralph – a documentary about Northern Ireland’s first Bollywood dance group which won the Director’s Choice award, and The Bird Man, directed by Aideen Johnston – winner of Cinema Sports 14 and also the runner up of the Audience Choice Award.

Over all it was a great night, with lots of support from the local community and lots of great local films being shown. The standard was much higher than I expected and I thoroughly enjoyed every film that was shown. The mix of genres was also very good and the quality was fantastic, with no technical hitches at all. As this was a part of Belfast Film Festival, they had use of a state of the art 4K Projector, which meant that the films were seen the way that they were meant to be seen, heightening the overall quality of the whole event.

Until the next Film Devour, as organiser Brian Mulholland would say, stay beautiful!

Film Devour 13

Laura Caldwell

Author: Laura Caldwell

Hi, I'm Laura. I'm 30 years old and have a degree in Journalism with Photo-Imaging at the University of Ulster. I have an undying love for Belfast and all that it has to offer, an undying love for sleeping, Tegan and Sara, trashy tv shows, foreign snack-foods and being irresponsible with money. I also quite like origami, reading, jazz, hip-hop, dubstep, anything acoustic and Food Network TV. I've written for The Big List, Culture NI, Chatterbox and The Echo, as well as writing for BBC Across the Line.

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