Ffresh Festival launches first DVD to promote winning talent

Ffresh, The Student Moving Image Festival of Wales, is about celebrating new talent and offering those studying the moving image at Welsh institutions the chance to get ahead in the industry.
The Festival’s legacy of promoting the best talent at Wales' universities and colleges is now to be firmly set in place with the launch of the first ever DVD of winning films.
The DVD being celebrated was commissioned by Sgrîn Wales, co-ordinators of Ffresh, is aptly enough, the creation of students Simon Owen and Daniel Powell from Glamorgan Centre for Art & Design Technology, and includes winning work from the 2004 event held in Aberystwyth.
“Winning an award at Ffresh was a great achievement, but this DVD, which brings our work to the attention of so many more influential people, will hopefully be a significant boost to my career. Its great that winning the award has a legacy,” said Tom Willcox, one of the joint winners of the Best of Festival Award 2004, a graduate of the University College, Newport.
To ensure that the work of the successful students reaches a target audience of producers and commissioners worldwide the DVD was distributed at the Cannes Film Festival and has been sent to broadcasters such as Nickelodeon UK, Channel 4, Five, UKTV and Dreamworks.
Berwyn Rowlands, Chief Executive of Sgrîn, said: “The Ffresh Festival is always a very popular event but we are aware that due to the constraints of work many of those in the industry who are always looking for new ideas and emerging talent are unable to attend.”
Maggie Russell, Chair of the Festival and Head of Talent at BBC Wales, added: “The Festival is an interface between the talent and the industry, and we very much hope that by showing those who have been unable to attend in the past just what they have been missing over the last five years since the Festival’s inception, we will encourage more commissioning editors and talent scouts to attend."
Ffresh has also announced the appointment of a new Festival Manager. James Nee, who is also the film programmer for the Cardiff Screen Festival and worked on the recent Celtic Film and Television Festival as coordinator will replace Elain Dafydd, who managed the event from 2001.
(GB)