The Cre­ative Non­fic­tion Film Week­end high­lights the infi­nite pos­si­bil­i­ties of documentary

Tak­ing place dur­ing the last week­end of August (August 30^th until Sep­tem­ber 1^st) at East London’s Gen­e­sis Cin­e­ma, the Cre­ative Non­fic­tion Film Week­end announces itself not only as a cel­e­bra­tion of every­thing doc­u­men­tary can and should be, but an expan­sion of our under­stand­ing about what non­fic­tion can entail.

Although ​“cre­ative non­fic­tion” is more com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with works of lit­er­a­ture, fes­ti­val direc­tor and co-edi­tor of Sub­jec­tive Real­i­ties: The Art of Cre­ative Non­fic­tion Film Orla Smith saw in the term a poten­tial to con­vey a type of doc­u­men­tary that aims to tell a sto­ry and express a point of view, rather than to sim­ply edu­cate – films that are ​“work­ing with the mate­r­i­al of real life, but with cre­ative rather than jour­nal­is­tic aims” as she explains. The CNFW was born out of a need to cham­pi­on cre­ative non­fic­tion films that chal­lenge how we think about cin­e­ma, while also show­ing audi­ences the breadth of the genre as some­thing that can be ​“fun, fun­ny, enter­tain­ing, mov­ing, char­ac­ter-focused, DIY [or] political.”

In its inau­gur­al edi­tion, the CNFW brings a menagerie of films to Gen­e­sis Cin­e­ma, with a strong aim to forge a com­mu­ni­ty of film­mak­ers and cinephiles on a path towards a cin­e­ma that ​“embraces and inves­ti­gates the sub­jec­tiv­i­ty of real­i­ty” says Smith. Half of the titles on their slate are UK pre­mieres, which pro­vides a rare chance to see them in this coun­try and on the big screen.

The three-day fes­ti­val has been thought­ful­ly curat­ed with inter­sect­ing threads, one being the impor­tance of embrac­ing lo-fi, DIY film­mak­ing, as well as that of self-por­trai­ture and the imag­i­na­tive ways that film­mak­ers such as Zia Anger (My First Film) have been turn­ing the cam­era on them­selves. Reid Davenport’s I Didn’t See You There, Saeed Taji Farouky’s I See the Stars at Noon, Joan­na Arnow’s i hate myself 🙂 and Char­lie Shackleton’s As Mine Exact­ly dis­play a DIY flair and a cin­e­mat­ic flu­en­cy that cir­cum­vents the need for mon­ey and man­pow­er in order to be expressed.

Not­ing the sig­nif­i­cance of includ­ing a piece of live cin­e­ma with­in the pro­gramme, the fes­ti­val asks: ​“If we’re doing away with the rule­book in terms of what con­sti­tutes fic­tion and non­fic­tion, why not also throw out the rule­book on what con­sti­tutes cin­e­ma?” In this vein, 24 per­for­mances of As Mine Exact­ly, an inti­mate piece about Char­lie Shack­le­ton and his moth­er, will run across all three days of the fes­ti­val, expe­ri­enced sit­ting across from the artist and wear­ing a VR head­set. ​“What’s so cool about it is it makes you realise that there are so many dif­fer­ent ways to tell a sto­ry that you might not even con­sid­ered before” Smith explains.

The oth­er half of the pro­gramme, con­cerned with char­ac­ter por­traits, pro­vides a rare oppor­tu­ni­ty to catch Miryam Charles’ exquis­ite film Cette Mai­son, which we named one of the best films of 2022, on the big screen. It’s an excep­tion­al and unique film with lus­cious imagery and atmos­pher­ic sound that should real­ly be expe­ri­enced in a prop­er the­atri­cal set­ting, so make sure not to miss it.

Else­where, Pacho Velez’s Searchers, Eliane Raheb’s Miguel’s War and Luke Lorentzen’s A Still Small Voice tack­le their sub­jects’ inner worlds through a breadth of means: ani­ma­tion, reen­act­ment, obser­va­tion­al footage etc, while the films screen­ing on the festival’s last day tack­le polit­i­cal struc­tures through the lens of bor­der cross­ing, repres­sive regimes and crum­bling health­care sys­tems. Smith notes that ​“these films prove that a filmmaker’s expres­sive tools are also pow­er­ful polit­i­cal tools.”

Audi­ences are encour­aged to either expe­ri­ence all the films play­ing on a par­tic­u­lar day or to attend the whole thing, as the fes­ti­val was curat­ed to be expe­ri­enced as a whole. For those keen to dis­cov­er as many cre­ative non­fic­tion films as pos­si­ble, the fes­ti­val pro­vides the oppor­tu­ni­ty to see every­thing, with each film only screen­ing once and with no overlaps.

Guest film­mak­ers Saeed Taji Farouky, Pacho Velez, edi­tor Joe Bini, and pro­duc­er Kellen Quinn will be dis­cussing their works, and the fes­ti­val aims for this to take a form that feels dif­fer­ent to the stan­dard Q&A for­mat con­cerned with the cir­cum­stances around each film. Instead, Smith is keen for the guests to ​“delve into their philoso­phies on non­fic­tion film­mak­ing as it relates to the broad­er themes of the festival”.

“It’s my belief that when com­ing togeth­er to watch and appre­ci­ate doc­u­men­tary cin­e­ma, we should also extend the care and com­pas­sion those films ask of us into real life”, says Smith, who has also organ­ised a fundrais­ing raf­fle to take place in the cinema’s yard space. This will take place before the last film screens, pro­vid­ing three hours to relax and dis­cuss films with unlim­it­ed free tea and cof­fee, with the raf­fle rais­ing mon­ey for a young trans asy­lum-seek­er to help them afford basic sur­vival costs and save for a more secure liv­ing sit­u­a­tion. It’s a wor­thy cause nes­tled with­in a pro­gramme that has com­mu­ni­ty at its core, and the Cre­ative Non­fic­tion Film Week­end is an excit­ing new addi­tion to London’s inde­pen­dent film fes­ti­val calendar.

The inau­gur­al Cre­ative Non­fic­tion Film Week­end takes place at Gen­e­sis Cin­e­ma from August 30^th to Sep­tem­ber 1^st. You can explore the pro­gramme and get tick­ets at cnfw​.co​.uk and fol­low the fes­ti­val on Twitter/​X and Insta­gram.