LoCo’s first London Comedy Film Festival in partnership with the BFI launched with a Special Preview of The Muppets, followed by a Q&A with director James Bobin. A special preview deserves a special introduction, so we were delighted to welcome Kermit to open the Festival. Thank you to everyone at Disney, and to the BFI’s Justin Johnson for hosting the Q&A with James.

After an unusually epic School of Slapstick at our first London Comedy Film Festival, we’re back in Central London on Friday 17th February with a full day of funny film-making for kids aged 7-12. You can see films from other days and book places on our School of Slapstick website. But hurry — there are only twelve places in all. It’s a perfect half term treat, and everyone gets a DVD of their films to take home at the end of the day.

Be in with a chance to WIN one of these exclusive Muppets T-shirts by answering a few questions

Hello comedy lovers,

We hope you had as much fun as we did at the first London Comedy Film Festival at BFI Southbank.

We believe that supporting comedy film is crucial – so please tell us what you thought of the festival, the good, the bad and the ugly! Your feedback will mean we continue to improve, and will genuinely make a huge difference in helping us to secure the funding we need.

In case altruism isn’t enough, clicking on this link also means you can win a Muppets T-shirt!:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/LoCo

We’re indebted to you – thanks.

Everyone @ LoCo. x

As advertised, LoCo is hosting a filmmakers’ brunch on Sunday 29th January at BFI Southbank.

The aim is to get as many of those talented types among you together as well as LoCo industry friends and representatives from 11am onwards to talk film, comedy, and croissants! We’re hoping that this will be a rewarding opportunity for anyone with an interest in the funny stuff, or wanting to hook up with potential colleagues and comic collaborators. It’ll also be great for those of you who attend the LoCollege event to meet again and keep the creative momentum up over a nice cup of coffee!

We’ve decided to make this a free event but there is limited space so please let us know asap if you want to book a place. There will be food and drink available for you to buy at the bar. The event will be a chilled, friendly and informal one and the LoCo team will be on hand to welcome everyone and make sure you all get a chance to mingle/ chat/ swap email addresses etc.

We’ll either be in The Drawing Room or the Riverfront Bar – depending on numbers. We will confirm location with everyone who’s signed up by email by Saturday 28th.

Please email: louisa@locofilmfestival.com if you wish to attend
Date: Sunday 29th January
Time: 11am – 1pm
Location: BFI Southbank, tbc

Do send this on to anyone else who you think would be interested in coming along. Hope to see you there!

We are thrilled to announce that Mark Herbert, UK film producer and head of Warp Films will be joining Barnaby Thompson on our Producing Comedy panel on Friday 27th January as part of our two-day LoCollege course at BFI Southbank. Mark has produced an amazing array of British comedy TV and film work including Four Lions, Submarine, Le Donk and Scor-zay-zee, Bunny and the Bull and Phoenix Nights, and has been Bafta-awarded for his work on This Is England and My Wrongs, shared with Shane Meadows and Chris Morris respectively. Mark has also most recently produced Tyrannosaur and Kill List.

Denise Hicks, Director of LoCo, comments “Having Mark Herbert on board as we study the craft of comedy adds a fantastic British talent to an already stella line-up, and I know our delegates will be thrilled to meet him.”

Mark Herbert will sit on the panel for Producing Comedy as part of LoCo’s Kickstart Your Comedy Career course. The remaining few tickets are available here

We are delighted to announce ‘Black Pond’, directed by Will Sharpe & Tom Kingsley, as the winner of the first LoCo Discovery Award. It will be screened at 8.30pm on Saturday 28th January at BFI Southbank.   Tickets are available here: http://bit.ly/ynD6S0

One of LoCo’s core objectives is to help kickstart the careers of new British comedy filmmakers, and a key part of this is our annual LoCo Discovery Award for new British comedy films without distribution. Each year the winning film will be screened at LoCo’s London Comedy Film Festival, alongside films by established directors.

Denise Hicks, Director of LoCo, said: “We had a fantastic range of entries, but Black Pond really stands out as an original, beautifully crafted film, and LoCo is proud to champion it and to help it reach a wider audience. All three of the shortlisted films show huge promise for their directors, writers and performers, so we’re happy to say that British comedy is in good health, and good hands. Submissions for the 2013 LoCo Discovery Award will open later this year, so watch this space and get shooting!”

Tom Kingsley and Will Sharpe, directors, said:

“It’s great to win the first ever LoCo Discovery award. Film festivals don’t always treat comedy films as kindly as they do straightforward dramas, so it’s great that there’s now a film festival that recognises the importance of comedy to the exclusion of Everything Else. And awards such as this offer invaluable support for low budget films like ours. The two of us double-handedly organised Black Pond’s distribution, so it’s a nice change to be invited to a cinema, rather than having to wage a protracted phone campaign where we target small independent cinemas and insist they screen our film. Our DVD release will give the film a much wider audience, but we think the best place to watch comedy films is in the cinema. At the LoCo Film Festival. We couldn’t have made the film without the hard work and support of our extremely talented cast and crew. In particular, the film would not have been half as brilliant as it is without the magnificent performances of Chris Langham, Amanda Hadingue, Colin Hurley, Anna O’Grady, Helen Cripps and Simon Amstell.”

Congratulations to all involved in ‘Black Pond’, find out more by visiting http://blackpondfilm.com/ and guarantee your place at LoCo’s screening at the BFI Southbank on 28th January by purchasing your ticket here: http://bit.ly/ynD6S0.

We would also like to congratulate the two films that were shortlisted:

Pulp (Dir: Adam Hamdy, Shaun Magher) – “A comedy about comics.”

Weekend Retreat (Dir: Brett Harvey) – “Get away from it all. Relax. Survive.”

We’re delighted to announce that Emma Frost will be appearing at LoCollege’s Kickstart Your Comedy Career course on 26th January. Emma is one of Britain’s leading young writers. Among her many credits, she was lead writer for three series of Shameless, for which she received a BAFTA nomination, wrote the critically acclaimed Consuming Passions for BBC 4, and is a Screen International Star of Tomorrow. She has also worked as a script editor on series including Nighty Night and is developing a sitcom for Tiger Aspect.

Emma has just been commissioned to write The Wars Of The Roses, which BBC Controller of Drama Ben Stephenson describes as ”one of the most ambitious projects ever attempted by the BBC – a huge slice of history told from the perspective of the powerful women behind the throne.” You can read the press release here, and book LoCollege tickets here.

We’re very happy to announce that Ben Wheatley (director, Down Terrace, Kill List, Sightseers) and Alice Lowe (actor/writer,Hot Fuzz, Kill List, Sightseers) have joined the line-up for our first LoCollege course at The London Comedy Film Festival at BFI Southbank on 26 and 27 January. Ben and Alice are two of the most exciting talents in British cinema, and having terrified us last year in Kill List they are reuniting for Sightseers, executive produced by this year’s LoCo Hero Edgar Wright. You can read more about Sightseers here.

Other speakers at LoCollege include comedy commissioners Shane Allen (Channel 4), Lucy Lumsden (Sky) and Saurabh Kakkar (ITV), Barnaby Thompson (Head of Studio, Ealing and producer of Wayne’s World, St Trinian’s, Burke & Hare), Paul King (director, The Mighty Boosh, Bunny and the Bull), Misha Manson-Smith (director, Excluded, La La Land, Shirley Ghostman), Marc Wootton (writer and actor, Shirley Ghostman, Nativity, LaLa Land),  Manish Pandey (writer, Senna, Figlio), Tim Nuthall (writer, Figlio),  Abi Blackmore (writer and actor, Blind Date, Nice Guy), Steve Mason (Beta Band, La La Land), Olly Ralfe (Ralfe Band, Bunny and the Bull) and writer / producer Adrian Mackinder (Robin and Josie’s Utter Shambles).

You can book tickets for LoCollege here.

We are delighted to announce that our special 50th Anniversary screening of the classic British comedy Go To Blazes will be introduced by Francine Stock. Francine is the presenter of The Film Programme on BBC Radio 4 and author of In Glorious Technicolor: A Century of Film and How it has Shaped Us.

For anyone who loves British comedy, GO TO BLAZES has a breathtaking line-up of talent. To bring together Robert Morley (The African Queen, Topkapi), Daniel Massey (In Which We Serve, The Entertainer), Dennis Price (Kind Hearts and Coronets, The Rebel) and Coral Browne (Auntie Mame, Theatre of Blood) would be remarkable in itself. But GO TO BLAZES also features classic British character actors Norman Rossington (The Wrong Box, The Charge of the Light Brigade), Finlay Currie (Around The World in Eighty Days, Ben Hur) and Miles Malleson (The Importance of Being Earnest, The Man In The White Suit). And look out for TV favourites Derek Nimmo (Hell’s Bells, Oh Father!), John le Mesurier (Dad’s Army, The Rebel) Hugh Lloyd (Hancock’s Half Hour, You Rang, M’Lord?) and Arthur Lowe (Dad’s Army, Doctor at Large).

It also stars Downton Abbey Emmy winner Dame Maggie Smith as the exotic femme fatale Chantal. Go To Blazes was only her second film, but shows her at her flirtatious, witty best.

You can book tickets here.