New co-directors launch the 18th annual BIFF

This eclectic collection makes up the just some of this year’s Bradford International Film Festival, which was launched yesterday.

The event, running from April 19 to 29, will feature visits from special guests Barbara Windsor, Ray Winstone and French arthouse director Olivier Assayas as well as a programme of work celebrating the centenary of the birth of Warner Bros animator Chuck Jones.

BIFF, preparing for its 18th edition next month, has gone through a number of changes in recent years. Artistic director of the festival and Yorkshire Post film critic Tony Earnshaw stepped down last year and has been replaced by the double act of Tom Vincent and Neil Young. The festival has picked up a major sponsor in Virgin Media and the main venue of the festival, Bradford’s National Media Museum, has announced that the post of director is to be made redundant.

If any of this is causing consternation, it doesn’t show with either of this year’s co-artistic directors, who both say the overwhleming sensation is one of ‘excitement’.

“You spend a year pulling it all together, programming it and hoping that all the things you hope come off, do. At this point it is a really exciting moment when we get to share the programme with everyone,” says Young, who has programmed the Uncharted States of America strand of the festival since 2005. His counterpart Tom Vincent has worked in the film department since 2007, before being appointed co-artistic director.

He says: “For us it felt almost like we’d finished the festival last month when the brochure went out, but actually this is the best bit when we get to start sharing the programme and seeing how people will react to what is in it.”

There is no doubt that the big, popular events will be the on-stage interviews with Ray Winstone on April 21 and with Barbara Windsor on April 20.

There are also high hopes for the festival’s opening night film, Damsels in Distress, directed by Whit Stillman – his first since The Last Days of Disco in 1998.

UK premieres include Fightville, a documentary about mixed martial arts fighting, I am a Good Person/I am a Bad Person, a movie about movie festivals which will be introduced by director Ingrid Veninger and a special screening of a film from the Sydney Film Festival – Sydney being the world’s second UNESCO City of Film – Bradford is the first.

Of particular interest to local audiences is likely to be We Are Poets, which follows the story of Leeds Young Authors, a Chapeltown based group of young performance poets, who travel to compete in America.

A Widescreen Weekend will be held April 27 to 29, with a series of films which were shot in a specific format to be shown at their best on a widescreen cinema.

Other strands include the popular, returning Uncharted States of America, Bradford After Dark – which features a collection of horror films – and a family programme where a number of the cartoons of Chuck Jones will be screened.

Famed film critic Mark Kermode will also be at the festival – to interview Ray Winstone on stage, but also to play with his band The Dodge Brothers, who will be busking in the city centre on opening weekend.