How to Navigate Film Festivals with London Short Film Festival Co-founder Phillip Ilson

Short Films, Big Questions

In this episode we have the pleasure of speaking to the co- founder of the prestigious London Short Film Festival, Phillip Ilson.

Phillip co-founded LSFF with Kate Taylor in 2003 under its original moniker Halloween Short Film Festival, following ten years of running its predecessor The Halloween Society.

Phillip is also a vastly experienced short film programmer. He’s currently the Short Film Programmer for @BFI London Film Festival and has previously programmed for East End Film Festival, Cork Film Festival, Branchage Festival, Latitude and Curzon Soho.

In short (pun intended), there's not much Phillip Ilson doesn't know about short films.

We talk about all sorts, including his journey with LSFF, what filmmakers have to gain from submitting to a festival, what makes a short film stand out, how the festival runs its selection process, as well as the process by which they come up with their film strands.

This was a fresh perspective for us (we haven't interviewed a festival founder before), and it was fascinating for us to get this insight. We've spoken before on the podcast about how we absolutely love LSFF, and were blown away when we went last January.

Links:

You can find out more about LSFF here:

https://shortfilms.org.uk/about/

Some of Phillip's favourite short films:

Wasp- dir. Andrea Arnold (watch with Mubi)

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/video/detail/amzn1.dv.gti.c37439e8-7d54-449d-a0ed-4fa4e9639316?autoplay=0&ref_=atv_cf_strg_wb

Smart Alec (Andrew Kotting) http://www.andrewkotting.com/ak%20web/smartalexvideo.html