All through next week, the OUFF will be screening student-made films at Worcester as part of their second Short Film Festival. It’s being spearheaded by the new President of OUFF, Emma Earnshaw, who I interviewed to learn more about the Festival, and making films at Oxford.  

A finalist at Worcester, Emma has been engaged in the film scene here since she joined: “I found them (OUFF) in Michaelmas of my first-year, and I kind-of followed them. At the end of my first year, when the committee opened up, I ran to be the head of social-media. I was then promoted to Head of Events.” 

The 2021-22  iteration of the Short Film Festival featured 27 films, 12 screenings, and 5 venues. It was a sprawling and successful project. In a mega review, the Student Film Journal’s Kaly Cerqueira described attending a screening: “my mum and I found ourselves immersed in the pure enjoyment of watching films that were clearly made by genuine film-lovers.”

At the time, Emma was on the committee: “The President last year ran the first film Festival for OUFF, and I was involved in that as marketing…I was really keen to run it again because it was a great idea and we had a lot of engagement. It’s a great way to showcase the talent that’s here in Oxford and what’s being made.” A poster from the first  iteration still hangs on her wall. Emma pointed to it as she talked about how that event was at least partly inspired by the Berlinale, “The running joke was that they have a bear and we have a chair.”

This year’s Festival will feature 25 films across 5 screenings, all in the Worcester Auditorium. While there were multiple screenings for each set last time, films are only being run once this year: “You got to make the date if you want to see this film.” 

The Festival also emphasised accessibility for people who have previously not been involved with film: “There are no experience requirements, you don’t have to have made a film before.”

Emma is herself one of the first-time directors through Projects ‘22, an annual program run by the OUFF that supports new directors. Five of the films in the Festival this year come from Projects: “They all have really interesting plots. Mine is quite a rogue one because mine goes more into a creepy thriller-ish vibe. A lot of them are more endearing and are really interesting stories about connecting between two people. A young mum having to speak to a dad for the first time in a long time. Or Oil Paints, about the death of a dad. They’re all quite heavy…quite powerful stories to give first-time filmmakers, and I think they all did really well.”

Talking about the structure of the Projects program, Emma said: “This is the second year we’ve run it; I’m hoping it will be run every year. The way it works is we take scripts from our screenwriting pool….with permission from the writer, we’ll match a producer and a director to a script, we’ll give them a set of dates and then a little bit of funding, and then we’ll help them crew their project…We run camera workshops…And then we try and help them through the editing process. If they have any questions, they can come to us. It’s basically just very much supporting first time filmmakers to get their films made, and then they automatically have a place at the Festival.”  

In contrast with the new filmmakers, there are directors who were featured in last year’s Festival and are making a repeat appearance. Emma talked animatedly about them: “ The one I’m really excited for is A Mosaic of All Possible Greens on Wednesday. I am a bit biased, I did produce it, but Rosie was one of the directors of the film Festival last year. She had two films in the Festival last year, I think she’s incredibly talented. Mosaic was just a finalist for Watersprite, which is one of the biggest film Festivals in the UK. I know Hugo Max, who actually DOP-ed my film. He had a film last year, an art film, and he’s got another one this year. Yeah, they’re both really good, I’m really excited about that.” 

The Festival is aimed at a broader audience than just people already involved with film at Oxford. Emma told me how the marketing and events tried to go beyond the OUFF circles: “Our launch party we have this weekend is very much a fun thing. We’re getting friends to come…This is not just an OUFF party, it’s a very social thing. But then we’ll also have a networking aspect to it…So we’ve got wristbands. You can put one on if you have an idea, or one if you want to join someone’s idea, so people will be aware of who wants to network there because of their wristbands. Or you can just socialise.”

I asked Emma what audiences should expect from the five days of student film. She was confident: “I think you should expect a lot of fun! There’s a lot of talent, there’s so many different subjects, and there’s just so much range. That’s what makes it worth coming to see, the narratives that are being told, the different perspectives. Thursday, for instance, I think there’s one from Tunisia, Colombia, Uruguay – that’s crazy to me…the fact that these are different languages and different stories of what our life is like and what different people are experiencing. That’s what makes it worth seeing, and that’s what people should expect.” 


The second iteration of the OUFF Short Film Festival will run from 29 January to 3 February. You can find more information here.