CityLife

Mancattan to be screened at Salford Film Festival

Phil Drinkwater and Colin Warhurst

TAKE two first-time film-makers from Manchester with a mutual interest in Woody Allen and you’re left with Mancattan – a highlight of the sixth Salford Film Festival, which begins today (November 20).

Phil Drinkwater and Colin Warhurst not only scripted, directed and produced their debut feature but they starred in it too, then edited it upon completion in the Room 101 Editing Suite in a bedroom of their shared house in Chorlton.

Now 27, they met at St Albans secondary school, Gorton, before attending – a year apart – the media course at Xaverian College, Manchester.

Having graduated from university – Phil, Salford University, TV and radio; Colin, Manchester Met, English – they went on to get jobs, respectively, as a lecturer in TV and film at Xaverian, and as a camera technician for the BBC.

Mancattan is loosely based around their shared feelings of a new “quarter-life crisis” which afflicts those poor 20-somethings as they emerge from the cosseted environment of full-time education into the big and scary world of meaningful relationships and employment.

Audience

Discussing what started out as an idea for a short film and evolved into a mini epic, Drinkwater explains: “We were working on each other’s films at university and this seemed like a natural evolution.”

The project used equipment begged, borrowed and bought and among the many of its ‘stars’ are friends and acquaintences, including Manchester itself – which is the backdrop for most of the action.

A 10 day holiday to New York turned into an ‘on location’ adventure and the guys even managed to track down a bemused Woody Allen to the jazz club where he plays regularly, but weren’t able to film the experience.

One girlfriend and unpaid film extra became so fed up with filming taking priority over sightseeing that she became an ex-girlfriend.

Now all that remains is for the film to gain an audience – something which has been harder than either party anticipated.

Campaign

Warhurst is part of a movement of film-makers in the region campaigning under the North West New Wave banner for breaks for low budget movie makers which would make it easier for them to secure cinematic releases of their work, by bringing down the cost of applying for film classification.

“Things have changed enourmously in the last 10 years and the British Board of Film Classification has failed to keep pace,” he says.

“It costs roughly £1,500 for every four minutes of film made for it to be given classification and without that it’s not possible to get a theatrical release.

That’s a major obstacle to the new generation of first-time filmmakers who now have all the equipment necessary to make a film but cannot afford to get it released. It’s a real catch-22 situation.”

Film festivals are exempt from such rules, however – and Mancattan is one of the many treats awaiting at the Salford Film Festival. Mancattan will receive its first public screening at
The Lowry, Salford, tomorrow. Check for the availability of free tickets by calling 0844 815 4874.

The film festival, staged in and around Salford’s MediaCity, runs until Tuesday and begins with the English premiere of new Mike Knowles film A Boy Called Dad, and an acoustic set by Manchester band Paris Riots.

Visit salfordfilmfestival.org.uk for further details.