03/01/2011

Audiences in the Manchester area will get their funny bones tickled with the launch of the first ever Cofilmic Comedy Film Festival next year.

The festival will be formally launched at an event in February and will run from October 31 - November 1, 2011. One of the highlights of the festival will be a short film competition, judges for which include leading names in the world of British comedy including Cemetery Junction producer Charlie Hanson; BBC Comedy North executive producer Jon Montague; and Comedy Store founder Don Ward.

The Comedy Store is one of the backers of the event with their Manchester venue being the venue for the festival’s awards ceremony.

Janet Harrison, who earlier produced comedy short film Master Motivator, set up Cofilmic. She said, “Cofilmic will also provide an ongoing, professional talent development platform for budding hopefuls. The overarching aim being to create an environment that may kick-start a whole new era in comedy film making for the UK, based out of Manchester.”

“We have a wealth of talent in the North West who can inspire others to achieve great things. Lack of funding means that new filmmakers will have to be very commercial in their approach, no matter how small their project and we hope to help people with this process into a formal career path. We have been amazed by the amount of support we have received so far and we have some exciting partnerships in the pipeline – watch this space,” she added.