About : Festival of the Moving Image
UCL Film & TV Society is excited to announce the 16th addition of the Festival of the Moving Image (FOMI), returning to the Bloomsbury Theatre.
This is an award-winning student film festival, promoting emerging student filmmakers and championing creativity and innovation. Our theme this year is Entangled Encounters - between people, the environment, technology, and art. Inspired by New Materialist philosophy, we hope to use this theme to continue making FOMI a space to forge new connections and promote a love of independent film across the student body and wider London public.
This year we are thrilled to be partnering with the BFI and MUBI to offer an exciting series of events, as well as special prizes for our short film competition winners.
Short film competition | Screenings | Workshops | Panels | Networking | Events
BUY 2023 TICKETS
This is an award-winning student film festival, promoting emerging student filmmakers and championing creativity and innovation. Our theme this year is Entangled Encounters - between people, the environment, technology, and art. Inspired by New Materialist philosophy, we hope to use this theme to continue making FOMI a space to forge new connections and promote a love of independent film across the student body and wider London public.
This year we are thrilled to be partnering with the BFI and MUBI to offer an exciting series of events, as well as special prizes for our short film competition winners.
Short film competition | Screenings | Workshops | Panels | Networking | Events
BUY 2023 TICKETS
Our History
The UCL Festival of the Moving Image was founded in 2007 by Vladimir Smith Mesa (PhD researcher in UCL Spanish & Latin American Studies and founder and curator of the British-Cuban Heritage Foundation for the Arts) to give UCL's film students the opportunity to premiere their works at the UCL Bloomsbury Theatre. Vladimir hoped that it would help UCL to "become one of the leading university events for the exhibition, interpretation and study of audiovisual culture".
The festival was be hosted by UCL Spanish & Latin American Studies and the UCL Film Studies programme. Created to provide film students with a platform for their works, it began devoted to the audiovisual culture of the Americas. Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the publication of the New Latin American Cinema Movement, it focused on the cinematic work of Gabriel García Márquez and the 40th anniversary of the publication of his masterpiece 'One Hundred Years of Solitude'.
The second UCL Festival of the Moving Image was entitled 'Cities in/on Film', and focused on the complexities of urban life and was a decidedly cosmopolitan event, presenting works from Sweden, Serbia, Mexico, Cuba and Spain, as well as the UK. Bringing together the old and the new, it showed classics by Vilgot Sjöman, Ken Loach and Alejandro González Iñárritu alongside films made by the UCL Film & TV Society and the 2008 UCL Documentary Summer School.
In 2009 responsibility of the festival was handed over to UCLU Film and TV Society and it has been our privilege to carry on the tradition ever since. Each year members of the society assemble a festival committee and take sole responsibility for the running and planning of the event based around a particular theme. We have been honoured to host discussions with Phillipe Godeau (producer of cult classics Mr. Nobody and Eighth Day) and Jeremy Lovering (director of In Fear and BBC’s Sherlock), Ken Loach and Vanessa Redgrave.
In addition to awards such as the Best Arts Society of the Year and UCLU Student Academic Representatives Gold Award, FOMI has been repeatedly awarded Best Event. The festival is the highlight of our academic year and we look forward to bringing this upcoming edition to a larger audience.