Borderlines Film Festival: your favourite film

The films you the audience voted for turned out to be very different from those that proved popular at the box office.

While over 1,000 people came to see An Education, followed by large audience figures for Up in the Air and Nowhere Boy, when it came to our online poll it was two Japanese films that came out on top.

Departures, with its fresh take on life and death through the eyes of a young ceremonial corpse-washer,  won a resounding 18% of the vote with the understated meditation on family life, Still Walking, second with 13%.

Other films you rated highly were Nowhere Boy, The Limits of Control, Welcome, Tulpan, The Hurt Locker and Katalin Varga. All this indicates that there's a core audience at Borderlines that favours some of the more unusual and intriguing films on offer at the festival.

Rounding up/looking forward

All over for another year. Dates for Borderlines 2011: Friday 25 March to Sunday 10 April

Thanks to everyone who came to one of our 200 plus screenings for your support and we hope you enjoyed the film festival as much as we did!

Don't forget you have a week to vote for your favourite film on our online poll.

If you didn't get a chance to fill in one of our questionnaires you can still do this online.

A special thank-you to all projectionists and technicians without whom nothing would have appeared on the big screen, also to our volunteers including all of the dedicated Flicks in the Sticks promoters who bring cinema to all corners of the Marches the year round.

And just to bring everything full circle, here's the moment before the first screening of the Festival, Nowhere Boy in the Studio at The Courtyard in Hereford at 2pm on Friday 26 February.



And a snapshot from the auditorium just before the penultimate film, The Hurt Locker, 6.30pm on Sunday 14  March in the Main House, again at The Courtyard.

And the surprise film is...

Showing at 6.30pm on Sunday 14 March, the closing day of the Festival, the low-budget, low-grossing indie film about the Iraq war that has blasted a trail though both Oscars and the BAFTAs, winning awards in 6 categories at each.

This is the first time in the 82 year-old history of the Academy Awards that the Best Director Oscar has been won by a woman. And though director, Kathryn Bigelow was at pains to minimise the significance of her gender, The Hurt Locker is a remarkable achievement: a taut and totally absorbing action film that puts you in the shoes of the foot-soldier rather than at the controls of expensive, hi-tech hardware.

This blog from The Pinocchio Theory gives an interesting and in-depth reading of Bigelow's work in general and, at the close, of The Hurt Locker in particular.

The screening will be popular so call The Courtyard Box Office on 01432 340555 or

BAFTA London/BAFTA Hereford

Last Sunday: the annual BAFTA Awards ceremony at the Royal Opera House (see below). Today and tomorrow, Borderlines's own BAFTA event, Chris Atkins presents.

Today, at 5pm documentary film-maker Chris Atkins shows his 2007 film, Taking Liberties, a cautionary tale about the erosion of our civil liberties under the Blair government  in no less a venue than Hereford Cathedral which, appropriately enough, houses a copy of the Magana Carta in its archives. Free event.

Is it implausible that Amy Winehouse should set fire to her hair while mending a fuse? Or that Guy Ritchie gave himself a black eye while 'juggling with cutlery'?

Find out in  Starsuckers, a mischievous and radical polemic on the way the media feeds and exploits our obsession with media culture, and think again, showing as part of our special BAFTA/Screen WM event at 6.15pm on Monday 1 March at The Courtyard in Hereford.

The event features a rare chance to see this new documentary and to take part in a Q&A with Chris  afterwards. And there's a reception to follow.

Meanwhile, back in London, Kathryn Bigelow's mesmerising Iraq war movie The Hurt Locker swept the board with six BAFTAs, including Best Film and Best Director, the first time a woman has ever won this category.
Best Actress to Carey Mulligan for her role as Jenny, a school girl seduced by suavity and '60s London, in An Education.

Outstanding British Film went to Fish Tank, directed by another extremely able woman director, Andrea Arnold.

Jason Reitman and Sheldon Turner won the BAFTA for the witty, incisive script of Up in the Air, written (according to Reitman) specifically for George Clooney's voice.



French prison thriller A Prophet beat rival The White Ribbon in the Best Film Not in the English Language category.

While the spotlight was on a tearful Duncan Jones (formerly Zowie Bowie) for Outstanding Debut by a British Writer, Director or Producer for the sci-fi mystery
Moon.

And Up! flew away with both Best Animated Film and Best Music BAFTAs.

Outstanding performances

The nominations for the 2010 Oscars were announced a week ago and with the awards ceremony itself falling on Sunday 7 March, the eve of International Women's Day, there's plenty of kudos for female contenders.

Not only might Kathryn Bigelow turn out to be the first ever woman to win the Best Director for The Hurt Locker but Carey Mulligan, the young star of An Education, has been nominated in the Best Actress category for her portrayal of a schoolgirl high on hedonism in '60s London.







Both female leads from Up in the Air, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick, are in the running for the Best Supporting Actress Award. They play two very different high-fliers whom George Clooney (also nominated for Best Actor) encounters as 'travelling light' management consultant, Ryan Bingham.

Oscars aside, it's worth highlighting two fantastic performances from Belgian-born actress, Yolande Moreau, in films showing at The Courtyard Hereford during Borderlines 2010. In Seraphine she's a simple maid with an unshakeable conviction that Virgin Mary has given her the impulse to paint.






A very different role for Moreau in Louise-Michel where she's a foul-mouthed woman leading a female revolt, with many convoluted, anarchistic and hilarious plot twists, against their factory boss. One screening only for this so don't miss it!