Telezynski Interview.

            Cinema is a notoriously difficult industry in which to break through. Like all art, it is intrinsically subjective, so an enormous amount of hard work, luck and ambition are required if one is to stand out from the crowd. Lincoln-based filmmaker Bertie Telezynski is one such person, a man who at the tender age of 22 has directed four award-winning short films, and is now in pre-production on his debut feature.

            Bertie’s remarkably swift ascent began in his second year of university with the production of King Cone (2009), a short documentary about Gloucestershire’s David Morgan and his record-breaking collection of traffic cones. ‘We entered the BFI Film Futures contest almost on a whim,’ recalls Telezynski. ‘We never expected to win it. After that, things just seemed to snowball. It opened the door to a lot of smaller festivals; we had screenings at the London Short Film Festival and the Screentest Festival in 2010.’

            The success of King Cone was quickly followed up by Launderette (2010), a second documentary produced in compliance with the university’s degree structure. Following the evening denizens of a pokey Oxford launderette, the film provides an often poignant insight into the lives of everyday people. ‘I think the reason Launderette was so successful is because it’s real. Everyone has met people like those in the film, or has heard stories like theirs. The idea that you could find such profound experiences in somewhere as mundane as a launderette really spoke to people.’ The format clearly worked, as Launderette went on to premiere at Edinburgh’s prestigious International Film Festival, as well as winning Bertie his second BFI award in as many years.

            Since achieving so much with his documentaries, Telezynski has turned his hand to the hotly contested territory of narrative cinema, along with frequent collaborator and cinematographer Alex Nevill. His first short, The Siren (2010), achieved considerable success in some of the smaller UK-based film festivals, and Bertie has high hopes for his latest narrative, My Life in Cat Years (2011). ‘It’s always an anxious time, waiting to hear back from the festivals. We’ve set our sights very high this time, but we learnt with King Cone that it pays to be optimistic. I think Cat Years has a good festival life ahead of it. We’ve entered Edinburgh again, along with Venice, Raindance and the BFI London. Getting any of those would be a real achievement.’

            Along with My Life in Cat Years, Telezynski’s graduation piece – ­an insightful documentary entitled Blue and the Bughouse (2011) _ is currently active on the festival circuit. Having now graduated, Bertie has returned to his native Lincoln in order to work on his debut feature. ‘I see film as an amalgamation of all the art forms. You can have an excellent score, script, performance or set design and that may ensure a good film, but to be truly filmic transcends that. You need to tick all the boxes. I fell in love with the organic process inherent in documentary filmmaking and want to bring an element of that to the feature. It’s likely to be less scripted, less structured than I’m used to.’

Bertie on Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/user2572335

Bertie on IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm4236958/