Playback Festival: What Can Film Festivals Do For You?

11 Mar 2017

If the event is sold out you can try the returns queue at the ICA Box Office on the day of the event. We will release any uncollected guest tickets just after start of each event.

This discussion takes a look at why film festivals are important to film culture, how to make the most of attending a film festival and how you may get your film accepted into a festival and in front of a paying audience. The event features representatives from a range of exciting film festivals, including BFI London Film Festival Programme Jemma Desai, Aesthetica Film Festival Director Cherie Federico, filmmaker Alex Taylor, Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival Director Peter Taylor and Underwire Film Festival Programme Director Anna Bogustkaya.

Speaker biographies

Anna Bogutskaya

Anna Bogutskaya is a film programmer, event producer and marketeer. She hails from Spain, via Russia and France, and has a background in photography, journalism and film. After working on the releases of several films at Pedro Almodovar’s production house El Deseo and managing their digital content, she relocated to London to work in the BFI festivals team and delved head-first into the world of film and event programming. After running the UK’s largest online filmmaker’s network, Shooting People, Anna is now programming for the BFI, runs BAFTA-recognised Underwire Film Festival and co-founded horror film collective The Final Girls. On the side, Anna also consults on marketing for independent film projects and is developing an app for cinemas.
Jemma Desai

Jemma Desai is Film Programme Manager at the British Council, where she looks after their activity with short filmmakers and their global touring initiatives. She also programmes for BFI London Film Festival and has contributed to various film publications including Sight & Sound and BFI online. In 2012 Jemma founded I am Dora, a curatorial initiative exploring how women identify with one another through film, which encompasses a screening series, a printed publication and discussion events.
Cherie Federico

Cherie Federico is the Editor of Aesthetica Magazine and the Director of the Aesthetica Short Film Festival (ASFF), a major UK and BAFTA-recognised short film festival. Originally from New York, Cherie moved to the UK in 2002 to study for her Masters Degree and since then has developed Aesthetica into an international brand. ASFF, now in its seventh year, is a dynamic addition to the international film festival circuit, world-renowned for its outstanding short film programme and industry events, such as masterclasses with leading film organisations Channel 4, Warp Films, Association of Camera Operators and more. Cherie has given talks at various film festivals and panels such as BFI Film Academy and BAFTA.
Alex Taylor

Alex Taylor won a Jury Award with his first short film ‘Kids Might Fly’ at SXSW Film Festival in 2010, going on to win several more international awards and two more short films. In 2014 he made his first feature film called Spaceship (BFI, BBC Films/Creative England) premiering at SXSW and the 60th BFI London Film Festival in 2016. Described as a "bold debut feature…a neon day-glo fever-dream of a movie" by Screen International, Spaceship—about a girl who fakes her own alien abduction and disappears—is out in UK Cinemas this May 19th 2017.
Peter Taylor

Peter Taylor is the Director of Berwick Film & Media Arts Festival. Previously based in Rotterdam he was a programmer for International Film Festival Rotterdam between 2006-2016, and curated over 300 film programmes and performances at WORM, the city’s self-styled Institute for Avant Garde-istic Recreation. Additional recent activities include: a research-based residency at AIR Berlin Alexanderplatz; programmes for PLASTIK, Ireland’s festival for artists’ moving image in 2015; and Opacities, a series of screenings and discursive workshops co-curated with Kathryn Elkin for Collective, Edinburgh, 2016.