The second Portsmouth::Screen - Film and New Media Festival kicks off on Friday 10 November with an Open Air screening of the film noir classic The Third Man projected onto a wall at the Eldon Building, Winston Churchill Avenue.

Saturday 11 November's Street Screen turns Pamerston Road into a feast of filmic delight. Portsmouth-based Film Company TinyHorse Media will be in a tent inviting young people to make a TV programme focusing on youth culture in Portsmouth, such as clothes, football, new talent and youth news. Director Lisa Gomer explains 'the tent will be set up like a studio with a blue screen, 2 cameras and a large monitor so that everyone not on camera can see what's going on. We will have a director's chair and clapperboard and the filming will run like a proper TV programme with shouts of "action" and "cut". The young people will have the option to use cameras and sound equipment as well as being interviewed or performing in front of the camera.' Other attractions as part of Street Screen include Aspex Gallery's Canvas Cinema, an exclusive programme of single-scene mini epics by artist Alex Pearl - each lasting just a few minutes, they are in turns strange, haunting and amusing repeated every 20 minutes during the afternoon; BoredBrand's Digital Funfair inviting all-comers to try their hand at the virtual coconut shy and silent films being screened in shop windows.

Portsmouth::Screen has a number of reasons to celebrate even before its begun. The SixtySecond Film Festival was successful in being awarded Arts Council Funding which ensures their planned events will definitely be going ahead, including screenings and a symposium with keynote speaker Malcolm Le Grice, the most important British modernist filmmaker living today and Plink Plonk Whirly Whirly Zzzzzzzzz Phttt a selection of new moving-image works accompanied by traditional and electronic music composed especially for the event at the New Theatre Royal. The entries for Shorts::Cut short film submissions from both local and regional filmmakers has more than doubled this year leaving the panel of University of Portsmouth Film students and lecturers the tough choice of selecting which films will be screened at the Third Floor arts centre on Monday 13 November. This year sees Portsmouth's first DV-Mission 48-hour film challenge and has a full quota of filmmakers prepared to spend just 2 days filming, editing and producing a short film to be judged and screened at the festival's closing event on Sunday 19 November at the Third Floor arts centre with an award ceremony and prize giving, followed by a wrap party.

Other festival highlights include VisionClash, an open platform VJ Jamm featuring multi-projector artists and live electronica at the India Arms, Southsea; a number of filmmaking workshops and masterclasses, film lectures, three nights of horror films, and a screening of new and experimental work by members of Digital Creatives, a group of filmmakers, animators and digital artists who meet regularly in Portsmouth.

The festival runs from 10-19 November and most events are free.


Portsmouth::Screen06 - Film and New Media Festival is co-ordinated by Portsmouth City Council Arts Service in partnership with Aspex Gallery, Digital Creatives, Moonworks Media, Universities of Chichester and Portsmouth, Portsmouth City Council's Education and Lifelong Learning and Youth Services, PACE, PAVE and TinyHorse Media and has been enabled by Screen South and the RIFE Lottery funding programme.