Taking place during the last weekend of August (August 30th until September 1st) at East London’s Genesis Cinema, the Creative Nonfiction Film Weekend announces itself not only as a celebration of everything documentary can and should be, but an expansion of our understanding about what nonfiction can entail.
Although “creative nonfiction” is more commonly associated with works of literature, festival director and co-editor of Subjective Realities: The Art of Creative Nonfiction Film Orla Smith saw in the term a potential to convey a type of documentary that aims to tell a story and express a point of view, rather than to simply educate – films that are “working with the material of real life, but with creative rather than journalistic aims” as she explains. The CNFW was born out of a need to champion creative nonfiction films that challenge how we think about cinema, while also showing audiences the breadth of the genre as something that can be “fun, funny, entertaining, moving, character-focused, DIY [or] political.”
In its inaugural edition, the CNFW brings a menagerie of films to Genesis Cinema, with a strong aim to forge a community of filmmakers and cinephiles on a path towards a cinema that “embraces and investigates the subjectivity of reality” says Smith. Half of the titles on their slate are UK premieres, which provides a rare chance to see them in this country and on the big screen.
The three-day festival has been thoughtfully curated with intersecting threads, one being the importance of embracing lo-fi, DIY filmmaking, as well as that of self-portraiture and the imaginative ways that filmmakers such as Zia Anger (My First Film) have been turning the camera on themselves. Reid Davenport’s I Didn’t See You There, Saeed Taji Farouky’s I See the Stars at Noon, Joanna Arnow’s i hate myself 
and Charlie Shackleton’s As Mine Exactly display a DIY flair and a cinematic fluency that circumvents the need for money and manpower in order to be expressed.
Noting the significance of including a piece of live cinema within the programme, the festival asks: “If we’re doing away with the rulebook in terms of what constitutes fiction and nonfiction, why not also throw out the rulebook on what constitutes cinema?” In this vein, 24 performances of As Mine Exactly, an intimate piece about Charlie Shackleton and his mother, will run across all three days of the festival, experienced sitting across from the artist and wearing a VR headset. “What’s so cool about it is it makes you realise that there are so many different ways to tell a story that you might not even considered before” Smith explains.
The other half of the programme, concerned with character portraits, provides a rare opportunity to catch Miryam Charles’ exquisite film Cette Maison, which we named one of the best films of 2022, on the big screen. It’s an exceptional and unique film with luscious imagery and atmospheric sound that should really be experienced in a proper theatrical setting, so make sure not to miss it.
Elsewhere, Pacho Velez’s Searchers, Eliane Raheb’s Miguel’s War and Luke Lorentzen’s A Still Small Voice tackle their subjects’ inner worlds through a breadth of means: animation, reenactment, observational footage etc, while the films screening on the festival’s last day tackle political structures through the lens of border crossing, repressive regimes and crumbling healthcare systems. Smith notes that “these films prove that a filmmaker’s expressive tools are also powerful political tools.”
Audiences are encouraged to either experience all the films playing on a particular day or to attend the whole thing, as the festival was curated to be experienced as a whole. For those keen to discover as many creative nonfiction films as possible, the festival provides the opportunity to see everything, with each film only screening once and with no overlaps.
Guest filmmakers Saeed Taji Farouky, Pacho Velez, editor Joe Bini, and producer Kellen Quinn will be discussing their works, and the festival aims for this to take a form that feels different to the standard Q&A format concerned with the circumstances around each film. Instead, Smith is keen for the guests to “delve into their philosophies on nonfiction filmmaking as it relates to the broader themes of the festival”.
“It’s my belief that when coming together to watch and appreciate documentary cinema, we should also extend the care and compassion those films ask of us into real life”, says Smith, who has also organised a fundraising raffle to take place in the cinema’s yard space. This will take place before the last film screens, providing three hours to relax and discuss films with unlimited free tea and coffee, with the raffle raising money for a young trans asylum-seeker to help them afford basic survival costs and save for a more secure living situation. It’s a worthy cause nestled within a programme that has community at its core, and the Creative Nonfiction Film Weekend is an exciting new addition to London’s independent film festival calendar.
The inaugural Creative Nonfiction Film Weekend takes place at Genesis Cinema from August 30th to September 1st. You can explore the programme and get tickets at cnfw.co.uk and follow the festival on Twitter/X and Instagram.
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