Mountain Patrol: Kekexili and In the City of Sylvia

The Portsmouth Film Festival continues today with a showing of Mountain Patrol: Kekexili (15) at the No.3 Cinema in Portsmouth’s central library in Guildhall Square. A film inspired by a people’s remarkable mission surrounding the illegal Tibetan antelope poaching in the region of Kekexili, the largest animal reserve in China. The story is brought to the screen with great detail by director Lu Chuan. Set against the exquisite backdrop of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, Chuan tells the tale of brave local Tibetans who face death and starvation to save the endangered antelope herds from a band of ruthless hunter. The film starts at 6:30pm.

Mountain Patrol: Kekexili is then followed at 8:30pm by In the City of Sylvia (PG). This film, by the Spanish director and cinema academic José Luis Guerín, is outstanding, a superbly shot and hauntingly enigmatic interior drama of longing, which has acquired cult status on the festival circuit and now has a very welcome UK release.

Tickets: £5, Concs:£3.50 or both films: £8, Concs:£6.

Check out the festivals’ website for full details.

Shorts::Cut 2009

Shorts::Cut, in partnership with The University of Portsmouth, Portsmouth’s No.3 Cinema and The Kings Theatre, organises screenings in Portsmouth and Southsea of short films by regional filmmakers. This year the screenings will be held at Portsmouth’s independent arts cinema, No.3, in the library in Guildhall Square and The Kings Theatre, Southsea. Selected films will also be shown as part of subsequent events during the Portsmouth Film Festival.

The Kings Theatre
Sunday 23 August, 2009 from 7pm
Tickets £3 advance, £4 on the door

No.3 Cinema
Central Library
Thursday 27 August, 2009 from 7:30pm
Tickets £3

Short films made in Portsmouth and the surrounding area could also win the award for Best Local film at The Guide Award 2009, organised by The News. Last year’s winner was “Stolen Youth”. For more information, go to The Guide award for Best Local Short Film.

Check the Kings Theatre Facebook event and the No. 3 Facebook event for full listings of all of the short films to be shown on both evenings.

No. 3 Cinema

Portsmouth’s small, central, art house cinema No. 3 (based in the Library) sadly closed it’s doors last month. The good news is that Portsmouth City Council are looking at taking it over and re-opening it, hopefully the cinema can re-open again soon and the venue can be supported.

The other day, thanks to Compulsive Productions, Strong Island was lucky enough to have a look about behind the scenes in the projection room:

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PRIMARY – Extended & Improved

We have some great news about our PRIMARY phonography exhibition (find out all the details here) that we can now announce:

- The deadline for submissions has now been extended to Sunday 4th March. We have had some incredible submissions but want to set aside more time to make the exhibition something really special.

- The competition is now open to up to 10 submissions from each individual. With the ability to capture many photos on your phone over the next two months we we want you to not feel restricted to just three. The same rules apply about the photos conforming to compositions using the primary colours though. If you have already submitted feel free to send more photos over as and when you please.

- The exhibition will be hosted by Albert Road’s own Bonzo Studio who are also partnering up with us in the creation of the exhibition space. More news on this soon!

- Finally, we will be running a competition as part of the exhibition where the best three photos submitted will win some incredible prizes. We will be announcing the prizes available very soon but got to say, these will be the best prize haul we have ever offered.

- We will be putting together a poster for the exhibition that will be on sale on the opening night. The poster will feature some of the best submissions and all profits from the sales will go to a local charity (details to follow soon). Due to this we need to say that any photos submitted to PRIMARY will involve you giving us permission to use them for commercial purposes, if you do not want your photo used in this way simply let us know via email.

Well, that is it for now! We really hope to drum up as much coverage locally for PRIMARY in the next couple of months so if you could Facebook/Tweet/+1 about the exhibition we would really appreciate it. We would love this exhibition to be a real reflection of the whole population of Portsmouth with everyone taking part and feeling involved.

It’s going to be a Strong Movember – Closed at £725

Righto chaps, it’s time to clean shave your boat race and get that mighty moustache on the grow in support of Movember for The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. For 30 days of November you can help support and raise awareness through selflessly parading your top lip for charity.

You can sign up yourself, as I’m sure many of you already have, or you can join the Strong Island team and seek out sponsorship as a team. Through the Strong Island Movember page you can ask people to join the group, make donations, upload photos and post updates via the MoSpace page, Facebook and Twitter.

Head over to www.mobro.co/StrongIsland if you would like to get involved and grow a Strong Moustache to help raise awareness, or simply head over to www.uk.movember.com and sign up to personally raise money.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers – prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Poster: Tristan Savage