Each year, Encounters features several features amongst its programme of short films. These films, from alumni of the festival or favoured filmmakers demonstrate successful transitions from short to feature filmmaking, as well as the appeal of moving back and forth between varying lengths. We spoke to the filmmakers who have features at Encounters, about the differences between short and feature filmmaking, their experiences with the industry and their thoughts on Encounters.

Martin Radich, Norfolk

Martin Radich’s Norfolk is the second feature film produced through Creative England’s iFeatures scheme – a Creative England project for making £350,000 micro budget features – and his third feature as director. It’s been picking up accolades at the various festivals it’s played at so far, including Rotterdam and Edinburgh, and now comes home to Encounters. “I think over the years I’ve had a couple of shorts shown at Encounters and certainly films that I’ve been the cinematographer on have screened here too. It’s a great festival and I’m very proud that Norfolk is showing.”

His career, now well on it’s way, started slowly. “I’m from Blackpool. I spent five years working the night shift in a biscuit factory. Those five years continue to remind me who I am and what it is I should do.” He’s acted as cinematographer on numerous films, and directed five shorts and three features. “Transitioning from shorts to features was relatively easy for me. I’d made a Cinema Extreme short which did show at Encounters and by the following April I was shooting my first feature. That whole process was incredibly straightforward. Making the next one however was the antithesis of that experience. So don’t take anything for granted. Each film could be your last.”

Rachel Lang, Baden Baden

Rachel Lang’s feature debut Baden Baden premiered in the Berlinale Forum earlier this year, and is now being distributed in the UK by Mubi. The contemplative nature of her work comes through in her communication. “I’m very interested in how humans work. I think I’m on an anthropological search through philosophy, frame, humour, colour, rhythm, and organic movement, trying to find out how to be in the most appropriate relationship with the world. I mean, in an ethical way, not a moral way. The question of judgement doesn’t interest me. It is a life long work to become a Human with capital H.”

The film follows two shorts, and forms a sort of loose trilogy from the filmmaker on the brink of a breakout. For her, transitioning from shorts to feature has been a smoother transition than many directors undergo, an experience which she detailed for us. “I worked with a team that I was close to, people who I was at school with, so there was a continuity between us since we know each other. As communication is the hardest thing when you are a director, you have to make the people feel what you want them to achieve (in the photography, sound, acting, anything.) Everything is a matter of how you manage to be understood. With the main actress, (Salomé Richard) it’s the same, as we’ve worked together for 7 years and things were very organic and fluent between us.”

Additionally, her relationship with non-crew collaborators was fortuitous. As well as receiving support from Tarantula, a Belgian experimental film orientated production company, producer Jeremy Forni has been on board with her work since she started out. “He’s very close to the writing, and at each step of the making. He has been very involved with everything. He always fights for me to be in the best position to be comfortable to work.” She was also involved with the ‘Ateliers d’Angers,’ “a script workshop that Jeanne Moreau created years ago to help young filmmakers with their first films.” She was thrown together with eight other European directors writing their first features, an experienced she describes as “a very rich experiment” that led to “great encounters and the chance to receive help from each other, as much as from the experts there also.”

As for moving between the formats, Rachel says that she feels “comfortable having more time to develop a story. You cannot tell the same story in 20 minutes as in 90 minutes. I was really happy to jump into this new rhythm, and to try to hold an audience for 90 minutes is a real challenge.” Currently, as well as having several shorts ready to be filmed should there be time. she’s working on a new script. “It’s about the Foreign Legion, and it will partly take place partly in Corsica, and partly in the African desert.”

Michael Anderson, The Hatching 

Though The Hatching is his first feature as director, Michael Anderson has a wealth of experience behind the camera. “I left university with a degree in Zoology and Botany and went to work for ‘Survival’, the natural history program makers, but soon moved on to general documentaries as a camera assistant.  I worked my way up through the grades, moving between documentaries, commercials and feature films, the first of which was Tommy, followed by Superman and many more. The film most influential on my filmmaking career was American Werewolf in London, directed by John Landis. I loved the combination of horror and comedy and that the director took his characters seriously and they were not merely caricatures.”

From here, Michael moved to work for Ridley Scott’s RSA, becoming the youngest ever Director of Photography to win the Samuelson’s Gold. For him, moving between shorts and features isn’t necessarily an upward movement, nor are the two fields and formats comparable. “My short film experience was initially limited to Channel 4’s series, ‘4 on 4’, designed to give a voice to new directors. But, as with any commissioned program, half the battle has already been fought for you. Generally speaking, the broadcaster provides the funds and the broadcasting platform. Whereas with feature films you not only have to raise the money but also find a distributor, so it is a whole different ballgame.”

 His feature debut, The Hatching, has been long gestating in his mind. “About twenty five years ago I was commissioned by Channel 4 to make a one hour documentary about the Somerset Levels, called Life on the Levels. So when the idea was hatched to make a film about crocodiles living in the canals and drainage ditches that criss-cross the landscape I bought into it immediately, having filmed there for over 18 months, I knew that the croc story had legs.”

In addition to the feature, Michael is working on a video game adaptation. “Here the ‘gamer’ is the crocodile and has to eat to survive. It is great fun, a completely new genre for me to explore. I am working with some brilliant game designers, developers and programmers and enjoying watching the concept art and game design being turned into a rather gristly but terribly funny game.” Following The Hatching, another American Werewolf inspired feature. “It is about a circus poodle that turns into a werewolf and is called Attack of the Werepoodle.” The title mostly speaks for itself. 

You can see all three of these filmmaker’s features at Encounters this weekend. Find out more about Martin Radich on his site, Micheal Anderson at his. Rachel Lang’s short films will be viewable on Mubi during October.