Trash Cannes tonight and beyond!

The Trash Cannes phenomenon of Hastings returns for 2016. Zelly Restorick speaks to organiser and initiator, Keith Rodway about what’s happening the year.

Hello Keith. What was the initiative for Trash Cannes?

The original idea for Trash Cannes came about because I couldn’t get my films shown at festivals, so I started my own – and Hastings seemed like the ideal place to have a film festival. It then grew over the years to embrace other disciplines.

There’s Trash Cannes Film and Trash’d New Wave? Anything else?

This year, with funding from the Arts Council, the Foreshore Trust, as well as the 5 Day Film Challenge and Trash’d at the Monkey, we have HOWL!, a spoken-word project for marginalised young people, which encourages the young people to develop their confidence and develop a voice through the arts – rap, poetry, visual art, stories, songs – and then perform on stage at the Stade Hall before a live audience. This year we’re working with two groups of young people at Sussex Coast College and our gala show will be at the Stade Hall on 18 December.

This year as part of our expanding LGBTQ+ strand, Ben Browton will curate Gender Breakdown, an archive review of the rise in awareness around gender non-binary issues in the press and through associated memorabilia, at the Borough Wines Underground Gallery in Robertson Street, Hastings. (Dates to be confirmed.)

What sort of things are happening in the coming months?

Trash’d at the Monkey is at the Brass Monkey on 22 October from 6pm; the Trash Cannes 5 Day Film Challenge gala show is at the Kino Teatr from 7pm on Thursday 17 November; a special screening of Hijra – India’s Third Gender by anthropologist, Michael Yorke and Being Penny, a film I’ve made myself, will be at the Electric Palace in January. (Date to be confirmed).

Our fanzine will be on sale from November and features interviews with Alan Moore and Steve Hackett, an extract from Brexit Boris by Heathcote Williams, plus articles, artworks, reviews and more from writers, artists, illustrators and photographers from Hastings and beyond.

On 27 January, Thomas Truax returns to Hastings for a performance at the Kino Teatr, supported by Western Swing band, Gadzooks! and the Kamo Quartet, a student string quartet from the Guildhall School of Music who will improvise sight-unseen to artist films made by filmmakers in Hastings.

What keeps you going with Trash Cannes?

What keeps us going is that as long as there’s a need for what we do, we’ll go on doing it!

What’s the energy of this festival?

The energy of the festival comes largely from the people who contribute to it and engage with it, along with the extraordinary wealth of creative talent and goodwill towards the arts that exists in Hastings and St Leonards.

By mentoring young event co-ordinators, writers, artists, filmmakers, poets, rappers and musicians we hope to stimulate their creativity and enhance their professional development. So far we’ve had good results, and we hope this continues. As is well known, Hastings is a deprived area socially and economically, and we hope that by engaging with a grass-roots arts festival, young people especially will begin to appreciate the value of the performing arts.

And what do you have planned for the rest of the festival?

For the coming year, we are planning An Evening With Alan Moore, to bring legendary comics artist, musician, author, philosopher and ceremonial magician, Alan Moore to the Kino.

The 5 Day Film Challenge will return for its 5^th year, Trash’d at the Monkey will continue our tradition of showing documentary films, staging bands with a well-established reputation for bringing stripped-back, unpretentious music to an appreciative audience, and we hope to be working with a physical theatre company based in Ashford. All this, and anything else we think will please our lovely audiences!

I know you’re a documentary and film maker. Are you working on any films?

I’m currently working on a short documentary celebrating 50 years of our partners, International Times, with interviews with photographer Grahame Keen, and – if all goes well – poet, political polemicist and mischief-maker, Heathcote Williams, plus whoever else I can persuade to contribute.

Being Penny, my second short-form documentary about trans-woman, Penny Panagi will have its premiere at the Electric Palace in January, and will then be streamed on OutTV, a new streaming channel positioning itself as ‘the gay Netflix’, in the spring of 2017.

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