Last night, LOCO unveiled their programme, alongside a swish new website. With twelve days of comedy focused cinema, events, parties and a terrific training weekend for young filmmakers, (more on this soon) LOCO is one of the friendliest, most convivial film festivals in London. As they put it at their launch, “it’s about meeting filmmakers, screening good films, making partnerships and bring people together.”

We’ve flicked through their lovely print brochure and picked five possible highlights amongst the programme.

One of a kind filmmaker and critic Mark Cousins joins us as the judge for March Film of the Month.

A highly-regarded figure within the film industry, Cousins has always been keen on incorporating his own unique perspective within all of his projects – whether conveyed through his work as a producer, director, or film critic/presenter.

Michael Lengsfield is a Screenwriter, and Scriptwriting Lecturer at the University of East Anglia. We spoke briefly with him about teaching the craft, developing your writing process and the (free) online course he is launching with FutureLearn.

Pegah Farahmand is the Editor of Channel 4’s short film strand Random Acts. Dedicated to the arts, Random Acts was created in 2011 to “escape the conventions of arts broadcasting and to expand its possibilities.” Pegah joined them last year, and in this guest blog tells us about her experiences with shaping a new direction for the platform, as well as offering advice to SP members about how to pitch films to her.

BFI’s LGBT-orientated festival Flare returns for a special 30th edition next month, and the programme has now been released.

The festival, known as London LGBT Film Festival until a re-envisioning a few years ago, is the biggest LGBT film festival in Europe and seems to grow in scale and stature each year. This year sees the inclusion of over 100 features and 50 shorts, and a wide looking events and industry programme.

This year’s programme is split into three enigmatically titled strands, Hearts, Bodies and Minds, with each thematic group aiming to spotlight one of three themes: LGBT content in British film and new British talent, transgender representation, and ‘queer science’ and new technology.

The programme includes a mix of premiering and underseen films, as well as a number of titles that have already achieved success (Todd Hayne’s Carol, recent Berlinale Audience Award winner Who’s Gonna Love Me Now, or iPhone shot, transgender talent led Tangerine).

Opening the festival is the Russell Tovey-starring football feature The Pass, with Catherine Corsini’s 1970s Parisian protest romance Summertime closing things off. Below, we spotlight a few interesting looking films that play in between.

BRITDOC‘s Luke Moody has returned with his esteemed opinions on the January Film of the Month finalists.

If you find Luke’s remarks insightful, you might want to check out the site he curates for BRITDOC, Something Real, in which he highlights documentary double bills and where to watch them. Luke will be also presenting a series of documentaries at the ICA soon, dubbed Frames of Representation, so keep an eye out for that too.

Luke noted his pleasure in viewing the top voted entries from a month that was undeniably strong, noting that his decision for a winner ultimately came down to a feeling that “any attention that can be given to humanising refugees in Calais and encouraging artists and filmmakers to think about this crisis” is worthwhile at this particular time.

We have Louis Theroux’s thoughts to share on the December Film of the Month finalists. His takes below on three “charming and enjoyable films.” Louis noted his fondness for all three documentaries, “two in a gentler, more whimsical key, and then the more harrowing and darker story of displaced Syrians.”

Louis Theroux’ extraordinary sounding feature film debut ‘My Scientology Movie‘ premiered at London Film Festival last October and should see a wider UK release soon. Find out more about Louis’ past documentaries and upcoming projects on his site.

Having sat on our panel at LSFF on film funding, we have the wonderful Pegah Farahmand in as our Film of the Month judge for February. Pegah is the Editor for Channel 4’s Random Acts, a position created for her at the start of last year.

Random Acts is a dedicated arts strand set up by Channel 4 in 2011, created to invite bolder, more innovative and creative commissions for the broadcaster. C4’s Random Acts welcomes the kind of unclassifiable and uncategorisable projects that had struggled to find a place there before.

In this guest blog, we hear from The Guardian’s resident doc-head Charlie Phillips about how to stand the best chance of getting a film made for the news organisation’s online documentary strand.

Until just over a year ago, Charlie Phillips was Deputy Director of Sheffield’s Doc/Fest, having run the successful ‘MeetMarket’ marketplace there for 7 years. Since then, he’s been at The Guardian, acting as their ‘Head of Documentaries’, the first person at that organisation to hold that title, and as he quipped “hopefully also the last.” While on the surface, the two organisations might seem different, Charlie has been keen to bring across the same ethos of approachability, integrity and transparency towards emergent filmmakers that he was a proponent of whilst up in Sheffield.

Charlie recently held a pitching session at the London Short Film Festival, talking about how filmmakers should frame their ideas and work when presenting them to The Guardian, then inviting attendees to pitch to him there and then.

We followed up with him after that event to get a better sense of what The Guardian might favour and what they are resistant to, so Shooting People’s members can firstly decide if The Guardian is the right platform for their documentary project, and if it is, how best to explain it to Charlie and his team.

BAFTA will be running their ‘BAFTA Crew’ scheme for the fourth year soon, and have opened applications for entrants.

Its an initiative we are quite fond of and one we feel falls in line with Shooting People’s values, recognising that films are not made by a single person, but as part of a collaborative process of many talented, often under appreciated, individuals. BAFTA Crew aims to connect emergent “below the line” talent with experienced industry professionals across all of film’s many disciplines and other new filmmakers through a number of masterclasses, events and networking meetups spread across a year-long programme.