North East Film Gets Edgy

For The Cultural Thing

Ryan Pilot

Explicitly erotic underground film brilliantlove made its North East debut this week.

Produced by Newcastle-based Pinball Films and directed by one third of the organisation, James Horner, it premiered in June at New York's Tribeca Film Festival and also played this year's Edinburgh Film Festival.

But it came home to play at the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle last Tuesday and also played Thursday.

Set in a remote Teesside town, the Northern Film and Media funded film follows young lovers, Manchester and Noon as they spend most of the first half of the film naked and blissfully having sex.

But their relationship is put to the test when naïve Manchester gets caught up in a world of art and pornography.

Speaking after the first screening, the film's writer, Sean Conway said: “I discovered the word erotology, which is the study of sexual love and love making and thought 'shit, I wish I'd have done that at A-level!'

“So one of ideas was that and the other idea was a pastiche of the art world, which was called 'Fuck Art' initially until brilliantlove became a fusion, an amalgamation of both.

“But obviously as a writer you should write about what you know and I don't know a great deal about the art world but sex and being in love is my specialist subject.”

New Creative Hub For North East

For The Cultural Thing

Exclusive by Ryan Pilot

A New creative hub is set to open in central Newcastle.

The building will primarily be used by Sustained Theatre North East, a black and ethnic theatre group.

But it will be open to everyone - with the man behind it, Oscar Watson of North East Intercultural Arts keen to include as manny people as possible, not just a creative élite.

He said: “There is a discussion at the moment about a building which will be about development of performance art.

“But I am very keen if that does happen is what we create is a creative community hub.

“The last government talked about creative hubs as spaces like schools for example, so I wanted to build on that – using the resources that came from Sustained Theatre to buy and open a building.

“But to make the resources of that building available to schools, and colleges and wide groups of people.

“There is a particular building that we have in mind and we're very close in the way to possibly getting it.

“But there are problems. It's a significant amount of money that's being brought into the region.

“It's £750,000 but we may not be able to get hold of it for the want of £10,000.”