A feature film directed by a professor from the University for the Creative Arts (UCA) at Maidstone is being shown at selected cinemas around the UK.
Ivul is the third cinema release from filmmaker, Andrew Kotting (Gallivant, 1996 and This Filthy Earth, 2001), who is a lecturer on the BA (Hons) Video Arts Production course at UCA Maidstone.
It tells the story of a teenage boy who abandons his family’s isolated rural home, after an argument with his father, to live in the trees.
Lack of funding in the UK meant filming had to be moved from Scotland to France - the cast, language and money also turned French too.
Andrew said: “I was approached by the BBC about 15 years ago to see if I was interested in developing other projects with them. I pitched Ivul, or Off the Ground as it was called then, which they then commissioned as a screenplay but the funding soon dried up.
“It is disappointing that British filmmakers can’t find funding in their own country, but I must admit, the knock-on effects of Ivul taking so long to be realised were ironically very positive because I got to make the film in France, in French, in a landscape which is very precious to me.”
Ivul, which cost nearly three quarters of a million pounds to make, is currently showing at the Renoir in London, Newcastle Tyneside, Bristol Watershed and the Manchester Cornerhouse.
The film opened to critical acclaim at the Locarno, London, Chennai and Vancouver International Film Festivals – the positive reviews have continued around the globe.
Ivul is the second in a trilogy of “Earth films” which the Professor of Time-based Media is planning to make. Having released This Filthy Earth in 2001, a concluding motion picture will be Andrew Kotting’s next feature-length project.
Andrew said: “The third film will involve some of the characters from the first two and will this time be set beneath the earth’s surface within the caving systems of the French Pyrenees and those found up in the Faroe Islands.”
Andrew is currently working on a 2012 Cultural Olympiad project for UCA’s Creative Campus Initiative in which he will film his journey in a giant swan pedalo from Swan Lake in Hastings to the Olympic site in London.
Ivul Official Website