Kino Independent Achievement Award 2020: Molly Brown

At The People's Film Festival we introduced the Kino Independent Achievement Award - an annual award where we honour one Kino member who’s achieved something great with their filmmaking. This year’s recipient is Molly Brown.

Kino Short Film hosts a monthly Short Film Open Mic where filmmakers of all levels come together to support each other in a non-competitive environment. Anyone can show a film on a first come first screened basis as long as the films are under 6 minutes, with a few exceptions for longer work of a certain quality. To date we've hosted 115th Short Film Open Mic events. The Kino International Filmmaking Movement is an initiative explained succinctly by the motto “Do well with nothing, do better with little, and do it now!”

Molly Brown is this year’s recipient of the Kino Independent Achievement Award. She is a regular at the Open Mic having first screened at the 29th event in 2011. Since then Molly has only missed a total of 3 events. She has made a new original work for each Kino Open Mic making her Kino filmography consist of 83 films in total, with several other films that she’s kept in her back pocket. Some of Molly's films have gone on to screen at countless festivals including a challenge film she made entitled “When Tickling Goes Wrong” which screened at more than fifteen festivals. Her dedication to keep producing new work proves that filmmaking is in her blood. We’re honouring Molly with this award because after 83 Kino screenings, what would a Kino screening be without Molly Brown?

The following is a retrospective of Molly’s work:

I bought a book on video editing in December of 2010, and by July of 2011, I had made my first short film (edited with my book on how to edit in Final Cut Pro 7 open in my lap) and was googling for somewhere to submit it when I stumbled across a listing for Kino London, a completely uncurated monthly event at which you could screen anything as long it was under six minutes long. All you had to do was email in and request a slot, so I did, and on the first of August, 2011, I screened my first short at Kino London.

A regular feature of Kino London back in those days were film challenges in which a filmmaker would be assigned a title chosen by the audience, and then they had to make a film with that title in time for screening the next month. The first night I went, in a fit of hubris I volunteered for a challenge and found myself not only making my second short film, but making it to a deadline. So I immediately got to work, my book on video editing once again open in my lap. 

Fast forward eight years, and I have made more than eighty short films - many of them without an open how-to book in my lap! :) - and my work has been screened in festivals (and occasionally in galleries) in countries including the U.S., Canada, France, Italy, Serbia, Australia, India, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and possibly one or two others I can't think of off the top of my head. I have even won a few awards. 

Without a monthly screening at Kino London giving me a reason to keep making films, I doubt I would have made more than a handful of shorts by now (if that). 

And as someone who learns by doing, having an - admittedly self-imposed - monthly deadline has been the best film school someone like me could have had. 

And finally: one thing I've neglected to mention until now is that it's always been fun. :) 

- Molly Brown Director, Animator