Congratulations to Finlay, Adrian and all the team behind Cutting Loose for picking-up the jury prize for Best Short Documentary at the RiverRun International Film Festival in North Carolina (USA).

This well-attended, well respected festival in the heartlands of America is run as a non-profit cultural organization dedicated to the role of cinema as a conduit of powerful ideas and diverse viewpoints. The festival’s mission is to foster a greater appreciation of cinema and a deeper understanding of the many people, cultures and perspectives offered by our world through regular interaction with great films and filmmakers.

On that note, we welcome the people of North Carolina into the lives of Scotland’s prison population – their hairstyles, lifestyles, hopes and dreams.

As part of GI – Glasgow’s biennial festival of visual art – this weekend at Tramway you can take part in a unique film-theater-visual art collaboration featuring one of DigiCult’s most experienced alumni, Graham Eatough (Lament 2003, Missing 2007).

Funded by Creative Scotland, The Making of Us is a cross-media, cross-platform  collaboration between film/theatre writer-director Graham, visual artist Graham Fagen and director of photography Michael McDonough (Winter’s Bone), managed and staged at Tramway by another DigiCult alumni, veteran Scottish producer Angela Murray (Room for The Night, 2002).

For an insight into the thinking behind the project, watch this video. And for tickets, contact Tramway direct. There’s a limited number of performances over the weekend – Friday 20th (8pm), Saturday 21st (3pm, 8pm) and Sunday 22nd (8pm). Tickets are free but need to be booked in advance (with returnable deposit of £5).

As part of the audience for Making of Us, you will become part of the film resulting from the weekend’s live performance.

Marking a change in direction for the company, DigiCult’s library of award winning shorts has started to pick-up international commercial distribution.

Leading the way in the last couple of weeks, Iain Gardner’s award winning animation ‘The Tannery” has sold to broadcaster SBS in Australia whilst Michael Pearce’s multi-award winning live action “Rite” has sold to Canal+ in Poland.

With Rite and Jessica Ashman’s “Fixing Luka” now represented for World Sales by Spanish agency Freak, the company is pursuing more strategic alliances with distributors worldwide, aiming to push our talent and stories beyond the festival circuit into mainstream circulation.

As DigiCult’s Incubator feature slate takes shape, this sales experience will help prepare the company for its first step into feature production in 2013.

DigiCult’s Incubator programme intensified over the winter months.

Building on last year’s call for talent and projects, we have five feature length stories now in development with Scottish based writers and writer-directors.

The cross genre slate features drama, horror, thriller and comedy material from Gregor Johnstone (Night of the Wolf), Norrie Bissell (The Last Man In Europe), Sam Firth (Isobel), Marcus Harbern (Cape Wrath) & Tom K. McCarthy (Persevere).

Currently at outline, the first scripts will appear in the summer.

Congratulations to Michael Pearce. DigiCult’s production Rite has won La Prix De La Realisation (Best Director Award) at the 28th Festival of European Cinema in Lille this week. In the words of festival representative Clara Mamelle:

“The Selection Committee and the whole team of the European Film Festival thank you for sending your short film for this 28th edition – without you, the selection would not have been the same!

Amongst the 1,916 films received, we selected those that seemed to us the very best: 62 short films of unmatched quality, mirroring both the diversity of styles, of registers, and of origins.

Beyond the pleasure that we, members of the organization, took in discovering your work, and later presenting it to the public of Lille, there is the pride of seeing the selection applauded by the audience throughout the week and several times by the different juries during the closing ceremony.

For the 28th consecutive year, the Festival is a great achievement, but this year has been exceptional and we want to thank you again, because the quality of the short films offered is undoubtedly the key to the success of this 27th edition and the enthusiasm of spectators at the Festival!”