The History of exposures

12 years in the making

As a festival, exposures has learned the golden rule: slowly slowly, catchy monkey. Hosted, organized and pioneered by Cornerhouse, one of the leading UK arts centres outside London, it has grown from humble originals to the definitive national UK student festival it is today. Its development as a festival has also mirrored the growth of Cornerhouse’s Education Department from the occasional guest speaker to the packed calendar of events it currently hosts - now constituting a third of Cornerhouse’s overall programme.

Originally titled ‘Northern Exposures’, the first installment of the festival was a modest affair: two two-hour screening slots in Cornerhouse’s Screen 3, on a Wednesday afternoon in December 1994. The event was called into being at the request of student filmmakers themselves and put together to reflect the nascent filmmaking courses appearing in the city and beyond: the Workers Film Association, Salford University’s new Media BA and other isolated courses around the region.

By its third year the festival had grown into a two-day festival showing films and videos in four categories: Drama, Documentary, Animation and Experimental. There were also the beginnings of the exposures’ career development programme with two industry seminars: ‘Meet the Industry Execs’ and ‘Meet the Crafts People’ – with guests including Phil Redmond and the editor of Prime Suspect and Cracker, Eddie Mansell. The 1996 festival also held the first ‘Best of the Fest’ party.

Over the following six years the festival grew in size and caliber, with guests reflecting the region’s growing contribution to British film and television: Granada TV began their popular Clip Clinics seminars in 1998, which ran for three years. And in 1999, pioneering producer Nicola Shindler and Red Production Company both collaborated with the festival to offer its first Writing for Television masterclass. The roll call of guests since has included feature directors Michael Winterbottom, Jamie Thraves, Danny Boyle (twice), Marc Evans, Richard Kwietniowski and Richard Jobson; scriptwriters Frank Cottrell-Boyce (twice), Russel T Davies and Paul Abbot; and documentary makers Brian Hill, Carol Morley, Paul Watson and Marc Isaacs (to name but a few).

The festival has always prided itself on keeping up with new demands and changes in the industry, holding masterclasses from very early on in digital technology, internet distribution and computer generated imagery.

In 1998 the festival dropped the ‘Northern’ in its title to become simply ‘exposures’, and continued to host a busy two-day programme until 2003 when, to meet growing demand and also to celebrate its tenth installment, it expanded to a three day event, and introduced a whole new category: ‘underexposed’ – aimed specifically at under-18 filmmakers. This strand of the festival proved so popular that come 2004 it constituted three separate two-hour screenings and a whole day’s worth of events.

In 2004, the festival introduced two new competition strands – Music Video and Screenwriting, and the number of entries continued to rise exponentially, from 147 films in 2003, to over 250 films and scripts in 2004. 2004 also saw the festival acquire individual sponsors for each screening category and for the first time programmed guest director introductions with each competitive screening. The best of the 2004 festival have been on tour around the Northwest of England, as well as being screened at international festivals around the world. Films from the festival have also been broadcast on The Community Channel (Sky Digital) and also on BBC2.

In 2005, for the first time, the festival broadened its remit to include entries from all over the country; making it the UK’s only student film festival of its kind.