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2023 has been one of the most professionally exhilarating years of my life but also one of the hardest. I have been affected deeply by losing Tom Butchart suddenly in June, the childhood friend “the keeper of sacred knowledge and provider of affordable dreams” that I made Sound It Out (my 2011 film) about. We also lost my mother-in-law Pat and documentary titan Jess Search. The impact of these deaths have intertwined with hugely positive experiences that I could never have predicted, leaving me a little discombobulated, determined to live with boldness, albeit with a twinge of melancholy.

In February I received the Chicken & Egg Award, which is given to eight established filmmakers from marginalised genders a year. The recipients form a cohort, are given mentorship, and an unrestricted prize. I spent some of my award going out to New Mexico to experiment with the arts lab at the University of New Mexico...

Exclusive: Ryan Donowho (The O.C.) is set to topline Art of a Hit (fka Excelsis), an indie psychological horror film directed by Gaelan Draper that will begin shooting in France this month under a SAG Interim Agreement. Rounding out the cast are Rob Raco (Riverdale), Charlie Saxton (Hung), Tim Jo (This Is Us), Allie MacDonald (Under the Silver Lake), James Earl (White Men Can’t Jump), and David Valdes (Speechless). Draper and Saxton co-wrote and are co-producing under their Dewey & Bug banner.

Set in 2003, the movie follows a bygone rock band as they journey to a 1000-year-old French chateau to record with a reclusive super-producer in hopes of rebooting their career. But as tensions rise and tempers flare, they realize they are up against more than just the pressure to succeed. Indie rock pioneer Adam Lasus is music directing the ’90s alternative-heavy soundtrack alongside music supervisor Linda Cohen (Licorice Pizza...

With a streak of humility utterly foreign to most music documentaries, Dunstan Bruce recounts the band’s successes – and failures – as pop stars and political activists

As a Dr Martens-wearing teenager in the 90s, I loathed the anarchist indie band Chumbawamba and their chart-topping anthem Tubthumping. Well, I take it all back after watching this funny and surprisingly sweet documentary co-directed by frontman Dunstan Bruce and Sophie Robinson. It begins with Bruce, now in his late 50s, overwhelmed by feelings of powerlessness as he thinks about the future of the planet, wondering what he can do. As a film-maker he indulges in a bit of wallowing here: taking the negative voice in his head and bringing it to life, played by an actor wearing a papier-mache head, who sarkily takes the piss out of him.

But from here the film settles nicely into an enjoyable blast of pop history. Chumbawamba...

It’s one thing to grapple with having been a one-hit wonder, and another when that singular smash may have given the world a wrong impression of what you were all about … or just represented a moment in which selling out was quickly succeeded by flaming out. These are some of the matters troubling former Chumbawamba frontman Dunstan Bruce’s mind in “I Get Knocked Down,” wherein the singer takes part as narrator, co-director, primary subject and putative conscience of a swept-aside alt-rock generation. His intention with the film is to beat himself up a little and find some redemption, proceeding from the assumption that having been responsible for 1997’s globally massive “Tubthumping” is not its own eternal reward.

“I Get Knocked Down” — named for a line in the chorus of “Tubthumping,” which will be instantly familiar to just about anyone sentient in the late ’90s — quickly emerges out of...

At this moment, somewhere on planet Earth, a radio is thumping with the unmistakable opening of Chumbawamba’s utterly absurd 1997 smash, “Tubthumping.” Love it or hate it, that opening segue from “We’ll be singing / While we’re winning” to “I Get Knocked Down / But I Get Up Again / You Are Never Gonna Keep Me Down” is an undeniably stirring bit of adrenaline. The voice shouting “I Get Knocked Down” belongs to Dunstan Bruce, lead and co-director of the documentary appropriately titled I Get Knocked Down, an endearing, intelligent exploration of the perils of fleeting fame.

Co-directed by BAFTA and Emmy winner Sophie Robinson, I Get Knocked Down takes a novel approach to its topic. Older viewers (like yours truly) may recall the cover “star” of Chumbawamba’s 1997 album Tubthumper: a baby with a grotesquely large mouth. (Think that face from David Lynch’s Inland Empire but plastered onto a baby’s head.

Kelsey Grammer, Phyllis Logan Headline Thriller ‘No Way Up’

Kelsey Grammer (X-Men: The Last Stand) and Phyllis Logan (Downton Abbey) have been set to lead the survival thriller No Way Up. Directed by Claudio Fäh (Wilder), the pic shows passengers fighting for air supply after their plane crashes into the Pacific Ocean. BAFTA-winner Annalise Davis and Molly Conners (Birdman) are producing with Will Clarke, Andy Mayson and Mike Runagall of Altitude Film Entertainment. The company will handle the film’s worldwide sales and will introduce to buyers at the American Film Market. A spring 2022 shoot will take off in Malta.

Rio Ferdinand Exec’ing Docuseries Following Emerging Soccer Stars

Soccer star Rio Ferdinand is executive producing documentary South Of The River, a three-parter showcasing the next generation of sporting talents. The project comes from Gabriel Clarke (Le Mans) of Noah Media Group, Jay Gill (Out Of Their Skin) is directing.

British musician and movie maker Duncan "Dunstan" Bruce is one of the founding members of the long-running English alternative rock band Chumbawamba and was responsible for his lead vocals on the catchy and/or annoying 1997 earworm song Tubthumping. Tubthumping almost reached the top of the UK Singles Charts but stalled out at number two ... while the track climbed into the top ten of the Us Billboard Hot 100 charts. Dunstan Bruce left Chumbawamba back in 2004 while...

Events include ’Meet The BFI Network’ and Kevin Macdonald Q&A.

The Edinburgh International Film Festival (Eiff) has revealed the line-up of industry events running alongside this year’s festival.

The nine-day industry programme, which runs June 21-29, takes place at the Press and Industry Centre in the Traverse theatre.

Industry events

The BFI’s six new regional talent executives, announced in April, will attend a ‘Meet the Network’ event that will feature an introduction by talent development manager Matimba Kabalika and a roundtable focussing on making the most of a short film, hosted by two BFI execs.

Fresh from the film’s Cannes premiere,...

The 7th annual Sydney Underground Film Festival, which runs this year on September 5-8 at the Factory Theatre, opens with a real bang when they will screen cult filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky’s latest cinematic odyssey, The Dance of Reality. This is Jodorowsky’s first film in over twenty years and is an imaginative and playful quasi-autobiography.

The rest of the four-day celebration is packed with more film oddities and excursions into surreal and transgressive territory. One particular highlight that is not to be missed is Don Swaynos’ incredibly crowd-pleasing comedy Pictures of Superheroes, about a slacker cleaning woman’s descent into an absurd world she can’t escape. Read the Underground Film Journal’s review of Pictures of Superheroes here.

Other twisted fiction films screening include Drew Tobias’s sick and twisted See You Next Tuesday, Cody Calahan’s apocalyptic Antisocial and Lloyd Kaufman’s highly-anticipated sequel Return to Nuke ‘Em High: Vol.

With her flame-red locks and a weeklong international tour, you would be forgiven for thinking Jeanie Finlay was picking up where Santa Claus left off. However, the occasion isn't Christmas, but another annual tradition worthy of merrymaking and good cheer -- Record Store Day, which Finlay is celebrating this week with a whirlwind tour of England and America, including stops at the Cimm Fest in Chicago on April 16th and the Webster Film Series in St. Louis (April 22-24), and the centerpiece of her Stateside appearances, a screening at the Walter Reade Theater in New York on Saturday evening, to show her latest film, "Sound It Out," a documentary about the last record store in the small North East England town of Teesside that our own Matt Singer wrote after its premiere at SXSW "isn't just good - it's important."

As with most things that carry such weight, "Sound It Out...