Our final Film of the Month judge for 2016 was Indieflix Founder and CEO, Scilla Andreen. Read more about her work and platform, here, before taking in her comments on the three very strong finalists for the December competition.

In November, playwright, screenwriter, frequent Alejandro González Iñárritu collaborator and Hollywood hotshot Alex Dinelaris joined us as Film of the Month judge. Here’s his feedback on the films that received the most votes from that month’s shortlist.

Alma Har’el is an Israeli-American filmmaker and music video director, best known for her boundary blurring feature documentaries Bombay Beach (2011) and LoveTrue (2016).

Back again for it’s 14th edition, the London Short Film Festival (LSFF), with it’s sizeable programme and unusual offerings, can be a daunting festival to delve into. We select five treats you might want to look towards.

Scilla Andreen is CEO and Founder of Indieflix.

Indieflix is a film streaming service “created by and for independent thinkers” that takes a different approach to similar platforms. Their Royalty Pool Minutes payment model rewards filmmakers for each minute that their film is viewed, increasing the filmmaker’s payout as the= company grows. IndieFlix was founded in 2005 with 65 titles, and now has over 8,000 shorts, features, documentaries, classic TV and web series from in excess of 85 countries, 2500 film festivals and the top film schools in their catalogue.

Not so long ago I made the outrageous suggestion that it’s impossible to spoil a film by revealing the plot. Considering how giving away the twist of a movie based on a best selling book can provoke a twitter storm of death threats, it should be more remarkable that most reviews rarely stretch far beyond a regurgitation of the narrative. Plot-reviewing makes sense for the purpose where it originated, the short first-look review that used to live on the first page I’d turn to in any newspaper. But these are less reviews than a buyer’s guide. In much the same way that I don’t need Which Magazine to interrogate the full socio-political implications of my new toaster, a film review of this kind has a specific function and does it well. Beyond that initial purchasing choice though it has little value, yet it’s surprisingly rare for anyone to stray beyond this template when discussing cinema.

From across Underwire’s mixed, interesting programmes this year, a selection of some of the best short documentaries included in this year’s festival, some of which are viewable online.

The criminalisation of narcotics is a complex issue. Decades of prohibition have not resulted in a decline in drug use and whilst this is not the victimless crime many imagine, the spiral of social problems associated with the drugs trade does flow from its illegality. However, in one area at least, I can see no alternative except a total ban. In the strongest possible terms I hereby call on all filmmakers to pledge to never include a sequence where characters take drugs and “things go weird”, because this is, without doubt, the most criminally boring thing you can watch.

One of the more light hearted sequences in Adam Curtis’ complex and mesmerising film “Hypernormalisation”, illustrates his suggestion that filmmakers helped enable the terrorist attacks of 9/11 by creating a “pessimistic mood”. Around an hour and forty minutes into the film he essays this idea using a fantastic montage of disaster movie clips set to Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream”. As crowds stare in horror, a variety terrors pour from the skies delivering impressive destruction to eye catching landmarks. Amidst the chaos Curtis silently brings up a caption remarking that all the films were released before 2001. It’s fun but of course the correct response is, “so what?”

Dr. Pollyanna Ruiz is Lecturer, Media and Film at the University of Sussex and is involved with the Engaging Youth in Heritage project. Here she tells us about one of the films produced as part of the project, You Can’t Move History, about the campaign to save South Bank’s famous skate spot, and the relationship between film and skateboarding.