The first ever Collective Film Festival London (CFFL) will take place later this summer with the aim of building a new community for emerging and established filmmakers alike.
The one-day event in July will include screenings of shorts and feature films from around the world (both in and out of competition), and host activities that celebrate filmmaking while broadening attendees’ skills in a variety of disciplines.
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Festival director Anthony Vander, a guerrilla filmmaker for over a decade, says the idea for CFFL was born out of a need to “bridge the gap” between seasoned and less-experienced filmmakers, and the desire to equip more underrepresented voices with the tools and personal connections to make themselves heard.
“Creating community is something that the film industry could always do with improving”, Anthony explains. “It’s not just from my own experiences, but more so the experiences of creatives that really want to break into the industry.”
This sentiment is echoed by deputy festival director, Bethany Taylor-Goh, who having “caught the filmmaking bug” in 2024 believes she wouldn’t be where she is now without the people that she’s met along the way.
“I didn’t go to film school. I didn’t have these contacts or this knowledge of the industry that you feel like sometimes you need to, and it can feel very alienating,” she says. It was very important for her and Anthony to create a festival that’s valuable for first-time and emerging filmmakers, and that they themselves “would love to go to and learn from.”
CFFL aims to help develop filmmakers’ skills through workshops and Q&As focused on overcoming various filmmaking roadblocks such as difficulty networking, restrictions on budget or access to locations.
Bethany adds, “Whether you’re interested in cinematography, lighting, sound, you’re an actor, or you’re multidisciplinary, there’ll be things at the festival that everyone can learn from.” She and Anthony believe that the festival’s community spirit will be further fostered by slightly unorthodox activities like karaōke.
The pair believe in the power of social media in building community, and will be leaning on it heavily to help promote creatives’ work online and make their collaboration and networking easier. Bethany describes how in the past many of her collaborations have happened from seeing what people share on Instagram, rather than through film festivals.
“It can be difficult sometimes. You go to these film festivals and meet so many people and then it’s just silence afterwards. If you don’t manage to see someone’s film or catch them, and they leave the festival immediately afterwards, you’re not sure how to follow them up.”
Through mailing lists and social media posts, including vox pop-style interviews, Bethany and Anthony hope to build a platform to help filmmakers keep in contact with each other long after the first CFFL comes to an end. They also hope to inspire other festivals to emphasise their potential to build communities, an essential for amplifying underrepresented voices.
Looking to the future, CFFL aims to be a yearly event and eventually join the Association of Independent Film Festivals.
In terms of the screening programme, the festival will have an international flavour, showing films from around the world. The CFFL team has received submissions from the likes of Nigeria, India, Iran and Taiwan, among others.
“They’re not just shorts, they’re features and documentaries”, Anthony remarks. “We’re not just looking for films that are set in stone and have a particular budget or crew cast attached, but also first-time and second-time filmmakers, and stories that are not just rooted in the UK but also worldwide.”
The inaugural Collective Film Festival London takes place on Friday 18 July at Collective Acting Studio. Book tickets at collectiveactingstudio.co.uk and follow the festival on Instagram.
