We are the Oska Bright steering committee and in this blog you will find about our experience of taking our film festival across the UK and abroad. Go to the dao directory for a link to the Oska Bright website. You can also read about the next Festival, which takes place in 2013, and find details of how to enter your own film.

Oh Deer where are are we?!

8 December 2014

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Lost in Liverpool! But we made it by the skin of our teeth to the Bluecoat.  Thanks to Dadafest for collaborating with us on this event. We hope to work with them again - their festival is on the alternate year to ours so there could be ways to collaborate in the future. We met Jordan from Young Dada who was in the film ‘Schoolageddon’ which was part of Oska Bright Film Festival 2013.  We hope they will send us their new film which is a documentary about their city. We put...

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Wet and wonderful Wales

11 November 2014

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Day 1 Down the windy roads to Wales we arrived in the lovely countryside in a gorgeous house. Writing this blog in front of a wood-burning stove to keep us warm! We’re looking forward to tomorrow and our first VJ workshop!   Day 2 We drove across the border and over the mountains into Wales and to the new venue of Celf O Gwmpas.  It’s an amazing space, welcoming and we were given a tour by Shan, the Director of Celf O Gwmpas. Our very first VJing workshop went down a...

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The Level Centre

31 October 2014

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The day after our event in Nottingham we travelled through the Derbyshire countryside to the Level Centre, Rowsley.  We have met people from The Level Centre before, but we’ve never visited where they are based. It was a cool building, a bit like a space age tin can.  We were running our film making workshop, which we’ve changed since we ran it last time. All the people who took part were lovely. Some of them are hoping to make some films for the 2015 festival and...

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Mission to Plymouth..

31 October 2014

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Oska Bright at The Funky Llama Club...it was colourful, it was loud, it was a nightclub.. the fish police played and they were very good! We screened some films and ran a VJ workshop.  The film screenings were a bit mixed, sometimes we had very few and sometimes a lot of people.   As part of our screening they played the feature film Mission to Lars… It was a very emotional film, I thought it was good.  I know it’s real life but I usually tend to like those stories...

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Oska Bright Film Festival hits the road again

23 October 2014

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This was our very first tour event 2014! We showed music videos and some dreamy films about people to the friendly audience at the Nottingham Broadway Cinema. The films looked absolutely fantastic in the new cinema package that we put together. We met Isabel from Salamanda Tandem, she was really interested in working with us.  We also met Jill from Pulp Friction smoothie bar - she runs a pedal powered cinema, and she might like to hire some of our films. Some of the audience said...

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Tyneside Cinema with Matthew and Becky

11 July 2013

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Waay Aye Man!!  We're in Newcastle! We were welcomed to the fabulous, glamourous Tyneside Cinema by Jonny Tull. We had a coffee in the bar before setting up and running our film screenings.  The projection quality was escellent and we had a great audience on the Friday.  We talked about if we come back, how we might work with the film-makers in the region. This was the LAST EVER screening of films from Oska Bright 2011! It's been great but we are really looking forward...

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Salisbury Arts Centre

27 June 2013

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The Arts Centre is a converted church -  with a great setup for our visit.  It was weird to leave for Salisbury on a Sunday, we stopped off in London to bring out of retirement the champion profiterole-eater and 1 direction fan - Adele King! she says "I found it good to be On The Road again, I felt relaxed about it. I hadn't worked with Becky before and that went very well."     The event was good, we got a wide range of reactions from the audience and some...

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Oska Bright and JUMPcuts

21 May 2013

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It Rained and-a-half! We left Brighton and we broke down!! Changed the car and after that small detour we were on the road!   We would have liked to have met up with Stephen from JUMPcuts in Glastonbury, but unfortunately we were too late and wanted to rest before our screening day. In The morning the sun came out, we arrived at the Engine Room in Bridgwater, it's a great venue and we were made to feel very welcome.  We had a brilliant audience including people from Open...

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The only way is Oska!

25 April 2013

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We came to Hadleigh Old Fire Station in Essex.  After going around the Basildon roundabout 6 times and taking photographs of the Basildon 'Hollywood' sign, we checked in and chilled out.  We had a nice relaxing dinner - the spicy chips were amazing!   The next morning we left our hotel, the hot water wasn't very hot but the lady on the checkout desk said we all smelled lovely anyway! The satnav guided us smoothly into Hadleigh and we arrived at the converted fire...

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Oska Bright at the Picture This...film festival in Canada!

14 February 2013

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  Day 1. Friday morning – 5am, freezing cold and far too early for my liking!!  Arrived at the coach station – everything was still dark, the sun began to rise as we reached Heathrow.  12 hours later we arrived in Calgary – Canada!  We were met at the airport by Sheryl, the ‘Picture This…film festival’ Director.  I was mega-excited to be there.  The hotel was right in the middle of the downtown area of Calgary.  We went...

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Jason flying solo in Nottingham!

11 December 2012

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  Hi everyone, it’s been a very VERY busy week for me! It started on Wednesday at Hove Museum, doing a film shoot for our new project ‘Celebrities On Celluloid’ – straight from there we dropped off and picked up stuff at the office, and then headed off to Nottingham! The next day, we got up extra early and got lost roughly 5 times on the way to the cinema.  we arrived on time, luckily! and set up for our screenings. The venue was the Broadway Cinema and it was...

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Oska Bright at the Cornwall Film Festival

13 November 2012

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 Hi it's Sarah and Adele here, this was our first time working together On The Road.  We have been to the Cornwall Film Festival at the Lighthouse Cinema in Newquay. The venue was brilliant, accessible and the staff were friendly and helpful.  We screened in the afternoon to a mostly non-disabled audience, it went well, it was nice to be in a proper cinema!  After our screening we checked out some of the rest of the festival – the animated shorts were brilliant! ...

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Oska Bright On The Road – Leicester

2 November 2012

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By Becky Bruzas and Matthew Hellett We had a long and exciting day at Embrace Arts in Leicester on 1 November. We did 5 screenings in all. Three in the afternoon and in the evening we showed Films in a Foreign Language and Films From Everywhere 1 – all from Oska Bright 2011. Then we did a Question and Answer session. It was fantastic! We met a student doing a case study on disability arts from the University of Leicester who will be writing about Oska Bright. Becky says, “This was...

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Oska Bright On The Road with Zinc in Chipping Ongar, Essex

21 October 2012

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19th October 2012 By Stephen Firshman and Sarah Watson It was brilliant! It was fun! It was Oska Bright On The Road in Ongar! We saw a film that the guys at Zinc made, which they are going to enter into Oska Bright 2013. We showed them how to use Flip Cams and hopefully they will use them. After we had showed the films, the audience asked us lots of questions. We had a long talk about the films and about film making. We think that we inspired them to make more of their own films and to send...

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Oska Bright On The Road – Newbury

16 October 2012

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By Matthew Hellett and Becky Bruzas 13th October We arrived at Newbury and checked into our hotel – then we went to check out Newbury Town. It was a quaint and a happening place – yeah! Oh my god! With a lovely variety of charity shops and pubs. This was the first On The Road event this year that was in a day centre – The Phoenix Centre – and we were partnering with Interakt Theatre who are based there. We screened the films in a brand new theatre space that was inside...

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Oska Bright Presentation at the Independent Cinema Office in London on 10th October 2012

11 October 2012

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By Sarah Watson It was a busy presentation to the Cultural Cinema Exhibition Course in Trafalgar Square today. It was Chaired by David Sin, the course leader and on the panel with me was Caroline Hennigan, Programme Director from Broadway in Nottingham. I made a short presentation about Oska Bright – what we do, where we’re from and why Oska Bright is so important. Then I showed “Unusual Journey” from Oska Bright 2007. After that Caroline did her presentation. Then we...

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Oska Bright On The Road, Ledbury

22 September 2012

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 20th September 2012 By Adele King and Jason Eade We arrived at The Market Theatre. It was a basic space – but the projector and DVD player were great! It was hard to present the films because all of the lights were shining in our eyes whilst we were talking. The audience gradually warmed to us, and by the end we had given out a whole load of Calling for Submissions Flyers – we hope to get some films for Oska Bright 2013 from Ledbury! And we lost a battery down the backseat...

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Oska Bright On The Road, Bromyard

22 September 2012

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 20th September 2012 By Adele King and Jason Eade We arrived early and got a very warm reception at the Bromyard Conquest Theatre. We set up our equipment and were lucky enough to get an awesome tour of the building – projector room, dressing room, props and costumes – it was like the Tardis! We had a super interested audience and the Question and Answer session went a lot more smoothly. We got lots of thanks at the end from our audience before we said...

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Oska Bright On The Road, Hereford

22 September 2012

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 Thursday 20th September 2012 By Jason Eade and Adele King Today we had a very nervous start. We eat a lot of cereal and found ourselves eating it with a fork by mistake! We travelled to the Courtyard Theatre in Hereford to present two screenings, a presentation and a Question and Answer Session. It was Adele’s first time On The Road, and Jason says that even though she was a little shy, she performed admirably! The Question and Answer session was hard because we couldn’t hear...

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Oska Bright On The Road – Bradford-on-Avon

5 May 2012

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 Saturday 5th May 2012 By Becky Bruzas and Matthew Hellett It was really good! All of the staff and the lovely audience at the Wilshire Music Centre were really warm and welcoming. It was a lovely venue! It was Becky’s first On The Road event. She says: “It was quite nerve-wracking and a bit overwhelming as I stepped into the venue. I didn’t expect it to be like that! After the first screening I felt a lot better and I really enjoyed it. It was fab and I’m looking...

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Oska Bright On The Road – Bradford, 1st May 2012

2 May 2012

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 By Jason Eade and Sarah Watson We set off to Bradford to visit Mind The Gap Studios and show some Oska Bright films. It was a very damp day and the motorways were misty with rain – so we watched “Underworld Revolution” in the back of the car. After about six and a half hours we arrived in Bradford and had a really nice Indian meal – and discovered Indian tea! Then we arrived at the Studios. We met Dave the technician and lots of other staff. We set up and then had...

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Embrace Create Connect Conference, Embrace Arts Centre, Leicester

17 March 2012

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15th and 16th March 2012 By Matthew Hellett and Sarah Watson The Conference began on Thursday the 15th March at 11 am with a great beginning session – everyone together doing stuff – we made paper planes and then threw them at each other! Then we grabbed a quick coffee and went straight upstairs to the screening room. Everyone sat on bean bags on the floor to watch the films – some people sat on chairs at the back, too. Everybody said how good the bean bags were – they felt more...

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Oska Bright On The Road in Israel – our meeting with the Israeli Cultural Affairs Department at the Israeli Embassy in London

16 February 2012

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 Wednesday 15th February 2012 By Matthew Hellett and Sarah Watson We just had a lovely meeting with Iris Ambor and Lark Bieberfrom the Embassy of Israel. They are the Counsellor for Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Officer and they want to see if they can work with us to see if we can bring Oska Bright to Israel. Once we were in the Embassy it was really nice – they had lovely, beautiful chandaliers! It was an amazing building. We have never been to an Embassy before....

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Oska Bright On The Road at Cinovate (www.cinovate.org ), Newport, Wales

14 February 2012

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 Friday 10th February 2012 By Sarah Watson We found the University in Newport very hard to find – the sign for it was so small! It was a big building, and it was hard to find our way around the inside, too. But when we met with the Cinovate staff they were very friendly and welcoming. We were part of a Panel Discussion during the morning. We met the people on the Panel with us – there was Rachel Castell who talked about “Support Your Local Cinema” and Jonathan...

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Announcement for 'Gold Run'

5 January 2012

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Happy New Year to you, we hope 2012 is really good for you! It’s Sarah and Matthew here from the Oska Bright Committee – we have some exciting news for you. Over the last year we have been making films with young people with a learning disability, and by March 2012 we will have made 5 new films – phew! They will all be shown as part of “Gold Run” – a new multi-media show that Carousel is putting on in partnership with Glyndebourne and Pallant House Gallery....

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