Marston’s Brewery has announced the launch of Beer Town Film Festival 2019 and is calling for entries from film makers of 16 years of age and above to enter five categories from now until February 2, 2019.
This is the second year for the award-winning film festival in Burton Upon Trent, the first one this year having attracted 796 short film entries from all over the UK.
Working in partnership on the film festival with Burton and South Derbyshire College, and backed by the town’s home-grown filmmaking talent, Marston’s is inviting entries for short fiction, short documentary, animated, music video and, new for this year, ‘mobile 61’ categories.
The judges will also award two further spot prizes — including one for the best film made by ‘home-grown’ talent — drawn from across all of the categories. Winners in each of the categories will receive a cash prize of £500.
Finally, the judges will award an overall Beer Town Festival winner selected from the finalists in each category — the ‘Hop D’Or’ — and they will collect £1,000 in prize money as well as the title.
Creative experts
Locally-born film makers, Hollywood special effects producer Rich Yeomans, and film maker and award-winning screen writer Deborah Haywood, are renewing their patronage and will be judges for the festival. The remaining judges for each of the categories will be drawn from a range of creative experts in their judging categories.
Judging will take place from March to May 2019 and the festival competition will conclude at the end of a week-long focus on film and film-making events in the town, from May 13-18, with an outdoor cinema, beer and food festival to be held at Marston’s Brewery on Saturday, May 18.
Jo Wyke, marketing manager at Marston’s, said: “We were thrilled by the reaction that we had from film-makers in our first year of competition. Beer Town Film Festival represents our town’s creativity and craftmanship as the spiritual home of brewing to a new UK-wide audience. We have started something really special and we want it to continue.”
In May this year, Matt Daunt won the best promotional and music film category for Blue, his music video for the Nottingham-based singer/songwriter, Rob Green. He then went on to win the Hop D’Or trophy.
He said: “Winning the award inspired me to work on a new music video over the summer, and I will definitely be entering this year’s competition, too.”
