Last night at the Apollo saw a veritable smorgasbordtasty films, from low-budget Brit / Pakistani 'Slackistan' and Mexican love story 'Macho', to Belgium mockumentary 'Vampires' and 'Bedways', the naughty German film packed with real sex!  As usual choosing which films to see was a bit of a nightmare, but settled on '09:06' and 'Vampires' which were thoroughly enjoyable.

So todays challenge is to not go for drinks after the private screening of 'A Serbian Film' tonight , even though I may need a stiff drink after this “....nightmare journey into sordid sex, violence, and death”.  And avoid the free Havana rum cocktails at our happy hour at the cinema from 5.30pm.  I need a clear head for the 99 Minute Casting School at 10am on Saturday.

I'm really looking forward to luxuriating in a whole day and night of cinema, including shorts, doco's, Japanese cinema and feminist porn!  Then there's the screening of 'Treasure of the Black Jaguar' with an after party at The Mayfair to look forward to, rumour has it the Jaguar boys know how to party.

Though again I must keep a reign on the boozing, as there's more 99 Minute Films Schools on Sunday morning and then the Awards Ceremony with the screening of 'Son of Babylon' Sunday evening.  Jeez Monday's going to be tough!

We're at the half way point of the festival now and its been pretty awesome so far.  The Opening Night screening was a great success with the directing duo Edward and Rory McHenry introducing their film star-packed feature film ' Jackboots on Whitehall ', and being thoroughly nice chaps all evening.

My personal highlight was getting star struck by the cast of Misfits, which was both a fantastic and geekily embarrassing experience (I am obsessed with this show!).  The after party was brilliant, with an excellent performance from US rock outfit The Airborne Toxic Event.  The ensuing hangover, however, was decidedly less brilliant, but nothing that a Berocca and two paracetamol for breakfast couldn't fix.

At the weekend we had Noel Clarke come down for the screening of the Ben Miller directed 'Huge', and Christopher Eccleston came along to watch 'Woman with a Broken Nose'.  A few dramas have been had along the way with a couple of walk-outs at 'L.A. Zombie', but then again gay-zombie horror porn is not everyone's cup of tea.

I'm personally looking forward to the Mike Newell lecture tonight, but am itching to see the Robin Hood Tax shorts which are screening at the same time, arrgh how can I be in two places at once?!

Tomorrow should be an exciting night at the Apollo Cinema, with the screening of Brit indie film 'Five Daughters', we have some of the fantastic cast coming down to say hello.  Note to self: Do not act like  an idiot in front of the talent, again.

We're pretty lucky that Gee Vaucher is a friend of Raindance and agreed to provide our festival image this year. When I first saw the image, something about it just made me stare and stare at it. And the more I see it, the more I love it:







We're going to have some limited edition prints of Gee's 2010 festival image available soon. If you're a benefactor, you'll get one for free. If you're not, you'll be able to buy one from somewhere on this site (if there are any left, of course). If you're interested in Gee's work, head over to Pictures On Walls. I've bought prints from there before, they seem a nice bunch.



Yesterday, Jamie McGregor, the designer of the poster for L.A. Zombie emailed. I really like this image. He's selling limited edition screenprints  on his website and I had to buy one. If you want one, you can order them here. He's coming over for the festival, so if you're around you can pick yours up from him in person. Seems like he's hoping to do a bit more film-related design work, so if you're the guy that commissions that kind of thing, you could do worse than give Jamie a bell.

Last weekend, the Raindance Team headed off to the Latitude Festival in Suffolk for some workshops and a film competition. We took over the Literary Salon where Elliot presented to Festival Goers  'Shooting With Zero Budget', 'The 60 Minute Film School' and 'Screenwriting For The Complete Absolute and Utter Beginner'. Participants could also shoot their short film over the weekend.



It was the first year Raindance was involved in Latitude and we are happy it went well. A lot of people came to see us at the Literary Salon and expressed their enthusiasm in our initiative.







We also had the chance to see the other performers in the different arenas: music, film, literature, poetry… Belle & Sebastian performed on Saturday night in front of a full audience, just after The Horrors. On Friday night, Jon Ronson, who was member of the Raindance jury last year, was on at the Literary Arena. Another past Raindance juror was performing that night; Riz Ahmed with MICrospcope, a special live music show. There was much more to see; check the full line up here.



We didn’t sleep much as there was a lot to see over these full three days, but it was a great experience. We hope to go back there next year and will keep you updated on what Raindance will offer you.

Following on from lour success at last year's Raindance Film Festival with our short film "Of Best Intentions", we were asked to put together a trailer for the 2010 Festival.

We filmed the trailer for the Dublin on Friday June 18th. We managed to convince most of our regular commercials production crew to get involved and the shoot went very well indeed. it was great fun and it was nice to be filming with no ad agency or client present after the previous four days on a tricky commercial shoot.

The cast included Gavin O'Connor (The Tudors), Luke Griffin, Caroline Power and Peadar Cox who are all well respected actors. They are all delighted to be involved.

The script for the trailer was written by Brian Durnin (Red Rage Films) and Alan Kelly (Rothco Advertising) and is based around the kidnapping of a business man and the ransom phone call to his wife that follows. The script is really great and very funny and the performances on the day added immensely to the production.

We hope you will enjoy the trailer which will be released shortly and we hope to male it over to this year's Festival...

Brian Durnin (Director) and Paul Holmes (Producer), Red Rage Films, Dublin.

Red Rage Films

Lstudio

Coming soon...