Ahead of Bristol’s Encounters Festival we’ve spoken to several of our very own shooters about the festival. These filmmakers with films in the competition told us about their entries, motivations, and what got them to where they are now.

Jonathan Schey is a young writer / director and a graduate of The Royal Court Theatre’s Studio Group, and was a member of the BFI Youth Jury at the 2012 London Film Festival. He has directed 5 short films that have screened at major festivals around the world, in Los Angeles, Berlin, Brest, Timisoara, Amsterdam, and London. His film, Liam Williams’ Valentine, aka The Coaches, was commissioned and broadcasted on Sky Arts as part of their Valentines Day comedy shorts programme, and his 2014 short, I Want To Be Happy Cha Cha Cha, was selected by Jack Thorne as Film of the Month on Shooting People.

His latest work, in competition at Encounters, The Entertainer, follows a party entertainer called Paul (Toby Jones), at a Bat Mitzvah, as the cracks in his persona begin to show when he starts drinking. The inspiration for the film came from his fascination of the concept of the party entertainer; “not the really expensive ones. I’m talking about the cheap ones you find on Google. Most of the ones I’ve witnessed seem to be hating the work they do. When I was researching the script, I talked to a few party entertainers and a lot of these guys are doing two parties a day, driving long distances, downing cans of red bull to keep their energy up. And I found that image – a depressed middle-aged man in a shit tuxedo being forced to entertain – both tragic and really funny.”

The fragility of the human outer-self is a recurring theme in Achey’s work, which he presents both poignantly and humorously. He says he “tries to make work that is both funny and tragic. Balancing on that thin tightrope is a really fun challenge for me. I enjoy searching for the cinematic moments in everyday life. Looking at the mundane and trying to make it magical. I think a lonely man sitting in a greasy spoon eating a bad sandwich can be as cinematic as a dinosaur chasing Chris Pratt.”

For Schey, the short film format is a chance to be bold and experiment. “For me, the key word in short filmmaking is free. Firstly, because everyone is bloody doing it for free. Secondly, as a filmmaker it’s the only time you’ll ever be able to be 100% free in your craft. Short films aren’t made to make money, they’re made to be a statement. A business card. A completely pure, non-tainted, slice of you.”

Indeed, Jonathan has certainly made his distinct mark on the shorts circuit so far. The success of I Want To Be Happy and it’s praise from Jack Thorne “helped massively to get The Entertainer off the ground.” But Schey also attributes his success to simply being open-minded; ‘”100%. Collaboration and community is everything. You’ve got to find your gang and Shooting People is a great platform to help you find them.”

Jonathan is now in the early stages of developing his first feature, which he describes mysteriously as ‘a mundane horror’, and he also has a TV comedy drama that’s in development. In the meantime, you can catch The Entertainer at 4pm on Wednesday 20th September at Encounters.

Natalia Kouneli is an accomplished video editor and motion graphics designer from Athens, Greece, who having established an impressive career in commercials since her studies in Video Design and Documentary in Milan, before mastering in Arts in Moving Image in London. has now directed a short documentary commissioned by the Scottish Documentary Institute. Documentary filmmaking is currently her biggest passion, “since I finished my studies I have always been scanning my surroundings for interesting stories and trying to find ways to bring them on the screen.”

This latest story is one that is both incredible and inspirational. Silent Laughs follows Leah Kalaitzi, “an Edinburgh-based Deaf stand-up comedian who fights for her dream to raise awareness about Deaf culture and issues through her comedy.’ Kalaitzi aims to make deaf culture more accessible to a mainstream audience through her comedy, by performing in British sign language and using an interpreter’s live voice to translate her routines.

The film also has a very personal meaning for Kouneli; “Leah is a childhood friend of mine – we met in Greece, when my parents sought for consolation in Leah’s mother when they found out that I was hard of hearing at the age of three. We spent our childhood years playing board games and hide and seek and then lost contact for 15 years. In 2015 I moved to Edinburgh where Leah happened to live and work and found a flat on her street, facing her sitting room window. One of the first things she told me when we met after all these years is that she was doing stand-up comedy in sign language and my immediate reaction was, “this needs to be brought on a screen”.

For Kouneli, the short film is “a very flexible format for new filmmakers to experiment with, as today’s technology and access to information and inspiration makes it easier than ever to put together a short story on the screen. Emotions can feel very strong when crammed in a few minutes and that’s the magic of short film format in my opinion. We live in a time where 360-degree indie filmmakers are thriving and countless creatives are using affordable mediums and easily accessible technology to produce one-man show short format content completely by themselves, taking care of all aspects of production on their own. However, my first experience working with a small crew made me realise the importance of team work in filmmaking. I feel it’s vital to have a general knowledge of all aspects of production but I think it’s just as important to specialise in an aspect you love and contribute to a team of people where each person covers a specific role. Filmmaking communities like Shooting People can help maintain the sense of team work from the very beginning of a filmmaker’s journey, where a creative might be tempted to isolate and experiment on their own.”