In October '99 the Club hosted our second night focusing on British Independent Film-makers. This year our guest was Andrew Parkinson, the writer/director/producer of "I Zombie: the Chronicles of Pain".

     During the evening he showed us first a trailer for "I Zombie" and then some 8mm shorts that he'd made earlier. Andrew works at the B.B.C. as a tele-cine operator, and is the current head of the Film-making Club. This allowed him access to the equipment to make his first feature. He described the problems of filming first on simple equipment and then upgrading to 16mm. The path to a final version of the movie involved re-writes and around four years of filming.

     He revealed in the talk how having finished the film he spent time trying to get a distributor interested in "I Zombie". He came close to having it released by Manga, but finally it was picked up, (in Britain), by Screen Edge Video. In America it was released as the first film by the famous horror magazine Fangoria. This was both on video and D.V.D., the latter with both additional scenes and a commentary.

     Finally he showed some clips from his, at that time, unfinished new movie 'Dead Creatures'. That has been shot on 35mm. This again features Andrew's own visions of zombies.

     The audience to the evening included make-up artist Kevin Carr and script-writer Cliffton Stewart, who's own short film 'The Mild Bunch' was broadcast on Anglia T.V. the previous week.

     If there is ever going to be a local film-making scene, be it genre or not, I hope these nights will be recognised as helping to get it started.

Written by Suzie Kuba.