PR 36835 
16 April 2015

BLANCO UK sponsors the third St Albans Film Festival
 
 
 
BLANCO UK is sponsoring the annual international St Albans Film Festival for the third year running. 

BLANCO UK is sponsoring the annual international St Albans Film Festival for the third year running. The festival takes place on 1-3May 2015 at venues around St Albans, with the opening and closing ceremonies being held at the newly renovated Odyssey Cinema.

Since the first event in 2013, the St Albans Film Festival has earned its place alongside the bigger international film festivals, gaining credibility by attracting over 1,000 entries from filmmakers from 40 countries into its short film competition, and also securing Christiane Kubrick, widow of film directing legend, Stanley Kubrick, who lived and worked in the area as its Patron.

The theme for this year's festival is ‘Space' featuring short films from up-and-coming filmmakers all over the world.

Films that have made it to the final include CENTURION RESURRECTION: by Hollywood filmmaker Richard Bazely, GHERKINS, directed by St Albans BAFTA winner Dan M Smith, and HIM UPSTAIRS starring Gwen Taylor & Ricky Tomlinson.

With BLANCO UK's purpose-built headquarters and showroom based in St Albans, the company is committed to supporting the local community and St Albans' worldwide reputation as a cultural and creative hub.

Ann-Marie Jones, Marketing Manager for BLANCO UK, says ‘We are delighted to be supporting the St Albans Film Festival once again. It is a fantastic local initiative which is hugely successful. The BLANCO team is very much looking forward to attending this year's festival.'

Leoni Kibbey, Director of the Festival, says: "This year's programme is available online and from the box office in the Town Hall in St Albans, and tickets are on sale. Many local organisations are holding their own space-related events and this year's festival promises to be a fantastic community effort. We are very grateful to BLANCO, which is once again supporting us and has been a supporter of the festival since the first event in 2013, and along with our other supporters has helped us to develop it into a nationally recognised film festival."

For more information on the St Albans Film Festival, please visitwww.stalbansfilmfestival.com. For further information on BLANCO UK, please call 01923 635 200 or visitwww.blanco.co.uk.

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Notes to editors:

About St Albans Film Festival:

• The film festival has become an important annual cultural event for the city since the first event in 2013.

• There are around 30 screenings, workshops and film related events happening over the weekend.

• The Town Hall in the centre of the city will be screening the finalists in the Short Films competition throughout Saturday, before the winners are announced on Sunday at the awards ceremony at The Odyssey.

• St Albans has impeccable fimmaking credentials: as well as the Kubrick connection, filmmaking pioneer Arthur Melbourne-Cooper was born and bred in the city and opened one of the first cinemas in the country 100 years ago (which has just reopened). He was already at the forefront of the development of the first British 35mm moving picture camera by the time, in 1908, he opened what is cited by The Shell Book of Firsts to be one of the first cinemas, as we know them today, in St Albans.

• St Albans is near to major studios like Pinewood, Elstree and Leavesden.

• Hertfordshire has always been an attractive proposition for filmmakers, from historic rural estates like Ashridge (Harry Potter, Les Miserable, Stardust) and Hatfield House (Band of Brothers, Batman Begins, Charlie & the Chocolate Factory) to Stevenage Bio Park (The Bourne Ultimatum's CIA headquarters) and St Albans Cathedral (Johnny English, Incendiary, First Knight). The county's locations have attracted the industry's biggest blockbusters for decades.

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