The LIAF Mini-Fest on 1st and 2nd April was a huge success, bringing together the LIAF audience and friends for our first major event of 2011 in the wonderful environment of the Horse Hospital.
Over 2 nights the audience was treated to a full blown retrospective of one of the UK’s most talented and unsung filmmakers Robert Morgan, two sublime half-hour animated documentaries by American husband and wife team Paul and Sandra Fierlinger, a best-ever Late Night Bizarre session and a very special preview of the 2011 Festival.
As usual every conceivable genre, technique and style was in evidence from Robert’s twisted and terrifying stop-motion horror films to the Fierlingers heart-on-the sleeve, beautifully drawn confessional documentaries and everything else in-between.
Robert Morgan sadly failed to materialise from his sick-bed for the planned Q and A, but we’ve re-scheduled this for the Barbican later in the year. We were all gob-smacked by the relentlessness brilliance and nastiness of ‘Bobby Yeah’, Robert’s latest 23 minute masterpiece, finished literally three days before the Horse Hospital screening. Even though Robert failed to make the screening he emailed through some notes and anecdotes for us to read out – such as the delightful one about how one of the worm characters were constructed out of a year’s worth of Robert’s collected toe-nails.
The biggest gasps from the audience were reserved for the Late Night Bizarre session, always a Horse Hospital favourite. Gut-busting hilarity, witless violence, ultimate gross-out and more fully ‘wrong’ moments than would normally make it into the other programmes were on display here – the weirdest films we have ever had the pleasure to screen!
All in all everyone had a ball and it’s convinced us – not that it is too difficult to do so – that we need to screen much more of this stuff as often as we know you want to see it.
