Stay the Same is currently screening (last night and tonight) at the London Short Film Festival and Sight and Sound magazine have very generously selected it in the 11 films to see at the festival. This is what they had to say:

“Filmmaker Sam Firth filmed herself in the exact same spot at precisely the same time each day for a year. The resulting film, Stay the Same, captures Firth’s changing environment over the year but also reflects her own shifting moods – the tears, enjoyment, determination and boredom of filming for 10 minutes every day in all weathers. It reveals a striking contrast between the filmmaker’s momentary emotions and the ever present rocks, tides and landscape that surround her. The film was subject to a mini-storm of controversy back in 2012, but as her film soberly reminds us, the natural world is largely indifference to our human concerns.”

To see the full article click here.

I am sad to be missing the London Short Film Festival this year. I have had a great time there in the past, seen incredible films and made fantastic connections with other film makers, but you can’t be there for them all especially as there is other work now to do with new projects. But I have also been struggling with a cold and the effects of the radio-iodine I took in November.

I want to write more soon about the overwhelming response I have had to Stay the Same, how interesting it has been seeing it placed in different programmes in different festivals and how, visiting these festivals, seeing other work, and meeting other film makers has all helped develop a sense of my voice, of where I might be going and given me renewed insight into what this film is really about – as if I am honest even as it’s creator the work chooses you as a conduit rather than the other way around.

The film also screened here in my new home in Drimnin a few weeks ago to a full village hall with lots of questions afterwards and a fantastic harp performance by Fraya Thomsen and Gillian Fleetwood which was an amazing evening.

Finally excitingly I am going to Stuttgart on Thursday to a festival of “expanded media” called Stuttgarter Filmwinter which I will report back on when I get home!