Young Farmers at Hay Festival Friday 28 May

If you enjoyed or missed the sell-out documentary-in-progress Young Farmers at Borderlines 2010  there's the opportunity to catch an update at the forthcoming Hay Festival.

Hereford-based Cantilupe Projects is filming members of the Herefordshire Federation of Young Farmers Clubs over a year: breeding the perfect dairy cow, laying a good hedge, parting sheep after a season on the Black Mountain, trying to find affordable housing - the passionate, authentic voices of farming’s ‘new blood’ talk about their work and the issues that affect their rural communities.

The event is at 9pm on Friday 28 May in The Ritzy tent on the Hay Festival site and will involve a short introduction from the director, Anne Cottringer, screening of extracts from the film, presentations from some more of the young farmers who have participated in the project and the opportunity to discuss the issues that the documentary raises. Footage is still being shot and the event gives a sneak preview of a truly local film-in-the-making. Book here.

If you can't make it, the documentary now has its own website (initiated in the Talk About Local workshop that was part of the Citizen Journalism event at Borderlines this year), featuring a different video clip from the film each week. There are also short extracts of the three young speakers, Richard Thomas, Ben Pritchard and Jono Rogers, at the event.

Brilley Sleeps Furiously

We ventured out to Brilley on the first Saturday evening of the festival to find a packed village hall and only a few cushions left for hire. Their adventurous choice of film - Sleep Furiously - had brought in some local farming families for the first time ever, as well as Festival goers like ourselves from away. Anticipation was high, tinged with a little nervousness from the organisers. The film is an extraordinary mix of the fascinating, the banal and the arty. But, not to worry! The audience recognised so much that is relevant to them - the long static camerawork over the beautiful, empty landscape, the annual round of farm work, the mobile library, the village show, the dogs and the sheep, the wonderful comedy moments and a particularly poignant one. The village discussed the closure of its school and who owned the land. Brilley's school closed 3 years ago and still sits empty and boarded up next to the village hall.

What with this film and the screening of Anne Cottringer's Young Farmers (work in progress) at the Courtyard the same morning, the Festival feels really special - a rural festival, by and about the communities which live here. The Brilley ploughman's supper afterwards was delicious, the damson chutney (wow!) and more people arrived for the second film of the evening - The Grocer's Son. I remind myself how enjoyable and worth making the effort it is to go to the Borderlines Flicks screenings. And I return with pertinent comments about and praise for the Festival. For the lady who wanted to know more about the way Sleep Furiously looked - I asked the producer, Margaret Matheson, when she arrived for the Ross Flicks screening the following Monday. She said that the film was shot on 16mm film rather than video because the director, Gideon Koppel, thought it would look better that way. It was transferred straight to digital for editing. The look of the film is very important; it is best viewed on DVD on a very good television. Projected onto a large screen it can look soft, faded and thin which was not how it's intended to.

From Jane Jackson, Borderlines Board Member