3rd May - 7th May Festival Fringe 30th April - 9th May
The White Bus Ltd
TAP, The Old Waterworks, North Road, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS0 7AB
The White Bus Ltd is delighted to organise and present the Southend-on-Sea Film Festival on behalf of Southend Borough Council.
We are Southend based, with our roots firmly planted in the local community. We specialise in film and video production, distribution and exhibition. We are also heavily involved in education, running courses on subjects as varied as camera lighting, editing and scriptwriting.
To the local film going public we are perhaps best known for our monthly Sunday film shows split between the Palace Theatre, Westcliff and the Park Inn Palace Hotel, Southend. Recent shows have included diverse films such as A Single Man, Wild Target, Winter’s Bone, The King’s Speech and Tamara Drewe. Our Christmas show in 2010 was the 1947 classic It Happened on Fifth Avenue and to celebrate Halloween in 2011 we screened the 1957 British horror film Night of the Demon. For our seasonal show in 2011 we presented three films: children's favourites Polar Express and The Muppet Christmas Carol in the afternoon and the classic White Christmas in the evening. Guests have joined us to introduce their films and the shows are supported by vintage adverts or a short film.
We are based at TAP, a temporary arts centre in an old Victorian water works, where we have our office and Cinema. The Cinema is available for private hire for previews, birthday parties, etc. Our Archive is home to over 2,000 reels of 16mm film, comprising over 250 British feature films, an extensive collection of material by iconic director Lindsay Anderson (whose drama documentary The White Bus inspired our company name) and hundreds of short films, documentaries and cartoons. Selections from the Archive are shown every Wednesday evening from 7pm. These are public shows, and admission is free, so please do join us! The films in the Archive are also available for private viewing in the Cinema.
We have been delighted to promote an annual short film competition through the Film Festival. Aimed at local filmmakers, this has strengthened our already strong ties with the Southend-based media colleges. This has also cemented our links with Southend’s twin town, the Polish resort of Sopot, which also holds an annual film festival. Selections from Southend are screened at Sopot, and we are pleased to showcase work from Sopot at our festival.
Do please get in touch if you would like to know more about our activities.
Paul Cotgrove Managing Director: The White Bus Ltd Festival Director: Southend-on-Sea Film Festival and Horror on Sea Film Festival
Festival Team
Festival Director : Paul Cotgrove Financial Director : Stephen Podgorney Programming : Paul Cotgrove Associate Programmer : David Holloway Marketing & Press Contact : Stephen Podgorney Website Design & Development : Richard Laverick Brochure Design & Development : Lucy Player Brochure Editor & Programme Notes : David Simpson Short Film Competition : Richard Laverick Festival Animation Ident : Aaron Foster Photography : Niki Cornish & Ian Treherne Festival Assistant : Heather Martin
