KTV Film Festival: Overview

Over a hundred film fans took their seats in the Gulbenkian on Easter Sunday for the KTV Film Festival, a collection of various factual, dramatic and comedic features produced by members of KTV. Fraser Whieldon reports for InQuire…

Speaking to CSRfm before the event, KTV Drama Coordinator, Arnie Voysey, praised the diversity of the projects and the effort put in by volunteers into their work.

The first feature at 10AM was the documentary Teaching in French?, a labour of love by the team behind KTV News, which took them either side of the English Channel to investigate the problems in the French teaching system. In addition to a number of interviews with teaching professionals, the documentary also included perspectives from students who took their Year Abroad to teach in France. The number of varied experiences and the obvious amount of work made for a highly informative and engaging documentary.

Teaching in French? was followed up by the mockumentary, Scenes from a Film, produced by some of the creative talent behind the KTV feature films. This provided some light entertainment before the first feature of the day, Natasha, a visually-impressive psychological horror film.

This rounded out the Morning Showcase, before the premier showing of the day, Incredible, KTV’s tentpole production. Dozens of cast members littered the audience in a packed out cinema, beaming with pride at what was an immensely well-received production. The film takes place almost entirely in flashback, and charts the degradation of a relationship with hundreds of miles between the participants.

Shot on a budget of £500, the film made use of drones as cameras for astonishing aerial shots, which complimented fine performances by the cast and excellent cinematography.

Following that were a couple of short films, Samaritan and Flow, which both received plaudits from the audience for their style and verve. Speaking to InQuire after the showing, one audience member described the shorts as ‘amazing’.

The transition to the Gulbenkian marked an immensely successful year for KTV, after several nights of live election coverage earlier in the year, and greatly expanded Varsity coverage. A large amount of KTV volunteers will be travelling to the National Student Television Awards later this month in the hopes of national recognition for their work.