CC
BAFTA Recognized 27th Premiers Plans Angers Film Festival - Offical Selection
The time had come. I sat in the Centre de Congrès in Angers with my left leg shaking uncontrollably. This was it. My first film, Black Sheep, was about to be screened for the first time. Screened in front of an audience of what the festival programmer had just told me was over one thousand people. One thousand people I thought to myself who had taken time out if their lives to see something I had directed. The lights went down, BLACK SHEEP came up.
I attempted, in vain, to focus on the film. Instead my attention was draw into examining my audience. To See if I could find some sign they were intrigued and entertained by my directorial debut. And it was at that moment I think I realised what cinema was. what I understood in that moment as I sat in a room with a group of strangers was that at its most basic, at its most primitive, cinema is a tool that allows whoever watching to entertainingly and intriguingly passes their time. And with truly great cinema, I think of Kubrick here, the intrigue and entertainment permeate beyond the length of the film and stay in your mind and continue to pass your time long after the credits roll. I guess that was what I was trying to figure out while I observed my audience during my first screening, if I had directed something worthy of passing their time.
Black Sheep screened at the Centre de Congrès in Angers, France at the 27th Premiers Plans Angers Film Festival on 21 January 2015
http://www.premiersplans.org/festival/selection_officielle-competition-FE-film.php?id=4777&p=2