Check out our awesome afterparty video from this year's festival at Les Voûtes, Saint-Paul in Paris. Regardez l'incroyable video de l'afterparty de cette année aux Voûtes, Saint-Paul, Paris, France. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lQOjhFWrvE&feature=youtu.be  ...

  It's about a quarter past four on the third day of the film festival and, due to a slight delay in scheduling, director Alan Arrivée is fielding questions about his film, The Man at the Door, from the audience members assembled outside the Action Christine cinema.  Ostensibly about the intrusion of an apparently threatening Mexican immigrant into the tightly locked home of a recently separated American woman, for Arrivée the film is a metaphor for relations between Mexico and ...

    It's nearly one am on the night of the second day of the ECU Film Festival, and while Belgian musician, Karim Baqqili, spins out some wild gypsy jazz on an oud, Patrick Chadwick is talking to me about Icelandic weather patterns.   We're milling around at the after-party at Les Voutes Saint Paul after a long day of screenings. The wine is flowing, in another room somewhere in this strangely cavernous place people are dancing to MGMT with champagne flutes in...

It's about a quarter to one on the second day of the festival and Pablo Tourrenc has just revealed to a room full of school children that Kid Cudi is habitually four or five hours late to turn up on the set of his video shoots. This is a fact that they will keep with them and treasure, spreading it around the playground like a bad case of measles. Pablo's been taking us through the basics of budgeting, scheduling and on-set parking - with a helpful reminder to always be prepared fo...

ÉCU 2012 FILM FESTIVAL DAY ONE It’s nearly half past six on the evening of the first day of the seventh European Independent Film Festival. Strains of smoky jazz, a snaking baritone sax line, filters through from the trio set up in the festival foyer, making its way to the little marquee where, even now,  film-makers are assembling for the welcome glass of wine or vitamin water. Amongst the group festival president, Scott Hillier, will later refer to as a “crazed bunch ...

HERMANN DJOUMESSI, a journalist for Vingt Paris and The Guardian, swung by the social media counter to give us his thoughts about the festival.    "I really enjoyed how filmmaker friendly the festival is. You can actually touch them," Djoumessi cheerily comments. This is Djoumessi's second festival. He loves the feeling that surrounds the event. The ability to watch films and then immediately after talk to the director is phenomenal and is a pleasurable experience to ...

As we count down to ÉCU 2012, we decided to sit down with the directors of last year’s Film of the Festival, 27m2, Gabriella Cserhati and Fabien Lartigue and discuss their experience with ÉCU, then and now, and their thoughts on independent filmmaking. What was it like participating in ÉCU 2011? Fabien: It was very cool. Was this your first festival? Gabriella: For this film it was the first festival, yeah. It was great, we didn’t believe it. Actually we were so su...

Nikola Chapelle: The role of sound, from pre-production to post-production, is a vital aspect of filmmaking and Nikola Chapelle is here to help in a specifically designed workshop! It will focus on good quality sound mixing to boost the overall impression of a film and provide useful tips and suggestions. So do you dream of establishing a strong director and sound mixer relationship? If so, this workshop is not to be missed! Be sure to head to the Grand Salle at the Action Christine on Sunday ...

The federal network of city portals CITYCELEBRITY (www.citycelebrity.ru) is the largest independent crowdsourcing creative platform in Russia. They gather young talents from the whole of the country, making projects and contests in which thousands of people can take part and collaborate with festivals, culture centers, universities, international representatives and embassies, galleries, museums, creative and business communities.By registering at CITYCELEBRITY, you are going to to get new exper...