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.

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 Presentation at “Conquering Public Spaces” Conference, City Library, Prague

15 November 2011

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By Matthew Hellett We went to this conference from 11 - 13 November in Prague that was put on by one of our past partner festival’s in Prague, Czech Republic – The Normal Festival. I gave a short speech about Oska Bright and showed 'The Royal Bite' from Oska Bright 2007. There was no time for question and answers, which was a shame. After me, my colleague DJ JJ from the Shut Up And Listen Radio Show at Carousel, gave a short presentation and played a bit from the radio...

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Oska Bright On The Road –Upstream, Brighton, 24th-26th May 2011

27 May 2011

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By Matthew Hellett, Maggie Dadswell and Sarah Watson This week we have been showing films at Upstream, part of Brighton Festival 2011. We've been promoting our work, and showing films that are highlights for us from the Oska Bright Library. We showed our films at Sallis Benney Theatre  and ran question and answer sessions for people who saw them. We met some interesting people – Mick our stage manager, Neil from Independent Theatre Trust and all the artists who showed their work as part...

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Oska Bright On The Road – Reel 2 Reel residency project in partnership with Tutti at Clare, South Australia

14 April 2011

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We've had an enjoyable week with a lively and enthusiastic group of young people. They had loads of ideas and loads of energy – we had to keep thinking of lots of new ideas to keep them all busy – we are exhausted now! They chose to make a film that was a trailer for a longer action film – called “The Legend of the K9 Hero”. It was about a superhero that saves the environment and the world! All of the films that we've made here in Australia will soon be up on...

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Oska Bright On The Road – Reel 2 Reel residency project in partnership with Tutti at Barossa Valley, South Australia

2 April 2011

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Wow! We've just finished the best film making week with a lovely group of people in Barossa valley. We worked at Nurootpa Library with 8 people with a learning disability from Barossa Leisure Options. The group made 3 separate adverts – one about Supakleen, a new kind of music that gets your house clean quickly, another called Quarter Bounders about two kangaroos eating burgers that gave them extra bounce to help them hop to different parts of Australia, and the third one called Superfast...

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Oska Bright On The Road – Reel 2 Reel residency project in partnership with Tutti. Week 4 of our work here by Matthew Hellett

27 March 2011

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 Wow! Our time here is going really quickly! This week on Monday we met up with Jackie Saunders from Tutti, to make an interview with her for a TV station in Melbourne that broadcasts all over Australia. The programme is made by learning disabled people and it is about learning disabled people. It was really nice to have an informative chat with Jackie about her work with Tutti, and about our work with Oska Bright. On Tuesday and Thursday, Stephen and Simon did some work training the Tutti...

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Oska Bright On The Road – Reel 2 Reel residency project in partnership with Tutti at Minda Campus, Adelaide

20 March 2011

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Tuesday 15th March until Friday 18th March 2011 By Matthew Hellett We have just finished our second residency – it was very successful! The 14 young people that we worked with were really lovely and nice. They made a Silent Movie style film that they called “Dr Spot Makes Cat Burgers”. We hope to have it up on the uScreen website soon. Everyone in the group was very enthusiastic and lively – full of ideas for film making! We made a script with them, and showed them how...

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Oska Bright On The Road Australia – Reel 2 Reel residency project in partnership with Tutti

12 March 2011

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By Matthew Hellett We have just finished a very successful week of our film making residency. 11 young people with a learning disability attended the training from across Adelaide – there were some people from Tutti choir, Restless Dance Company and some independent young people interested in film. We ran the course in the Marion area of Adelaide. They all created a very interesting film script and their film was called “Cops and Rockers” - we thought the film was very good....

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Oska Bright On The Road – The Launch of Reel 2 Reel project in partnership with Tutti at Adelaide International Film Festival

3 March 2011

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5 March 2011 at Mercury Cinema, Adelaide It was a really great day! We got to Mercury at 11 am ready to set up. Simon sorted out our audio description with the technician there, whilst we rehearsed our talk about Oska Bright with Mark. When we were ready we went out for a coffee and then lunch in Adelaide – we went through the red light district! At 2.30 pm we went back to Mercury Cinema to get ready for the launch. We helped Tutti to set up the food and drinks in the foyer of the cinema...

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Stephen Firschman reports on Oska Bright at 'Picture This...' Film Festival, Canada 2011

17 February 2011

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I arrived in Canada and the first thing that I saw was the snow – it was quite slippery but I enjoyed looking at it. On Saturday 12th February I went to the Picture This ….. Film Festival Award Gala in a nice posh hotel. My job was to talk about Oska Bright, present an Award and pick up some other Awards for film makers who couldn't attend. First of all, I picked up an Award for “The Piano”, a great little film that we screened in Oska Bright 2009. I really like this...

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Oska Bright at St John’s College, Brighton

10 December 2010

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By Adele King, Sarah Watson and Matthew Hellett We arrived at St John’s College and set up in the Youth Centre there. They had a new plasma screen to show our films on. We started off by doing a power point presentation. Everyone seemed very interested. Then we showed 'Oska Bright 2009 – Films from the West'. People laughed and we sang along with some of the lyrics, especially “Fish and Chips Today” from “Shape Up” and with the sheep from “Desperate...

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Oska Bright at Learning Disability Today, Islington, London

9 December 2010

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By Sarah Watson and Matthew Hellett It took a long time to get to the Business Design Centre – we ended up having to get a taxi from St Pancras Train Station because there were too many people trying to get onto the tube! When we arrived at the Learning Disability Today event, we spent some time setting up for our screenings. When things got going we went around to all of the stalls and everywhere with key rings and business cards, telling everyone about Oska Bright and where we were...

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Oska Bright On The Road – Liverpool

29 November 2010

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We arrived in Liverpool on Tuesday 23rd November at 5.30 pm ready for Dadafest 2010. We checked into the Travelodge central, just across the road from the fantastic World Museum where were going to be showing Oska Bright films the next day. On 24th November we arrived at the World Museum at 8.30 am. We met Rob from Dadafest who helped us get into the Museum where we met the lovely Paul and bubbly Jo. We set up ready for the films. Some of the films we showed we hadn't seen for ages, and seeing...

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Oska Bright presenting an Award at the Flash Forward Film Festival, Oxford on 7th November 2010

9 November 2010

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We had a really good day out at this Festival. It was an afternoon screening at VUE cinema. There were lots of films that we liked seeing, in particular: “Let Me In” by Arty Party was a great animation. It started off with a drawn person doing drawings which looked amazing. Then the characters all went home where some really strange things happened. First a man answered his door to lots of strange people and ended up inviting a lady with big boobs and a pizza to watch TV with him....

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Oska Bright go On The Road to the Hull Film Festival, April 2010

22 April 2010

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By Maggie Dadsbury and Sarah Watson Maggie and I arrived at Ferens Art Gallery at 9 am. It was sunny but very very cold. We waited ages for them to open the doors so that we could get in to set up for the screenings. When we got inside, the gallery had lots of room and was great. We had to sort out all of the technical stuff as there was nobody there to sort it out. Simon did a very good job! We met Sarah from Artslink and Sharon from Flexible Care – the ones from Hull who we worked with...

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