Dear Greenbelt Festival friends,

We were delighted to welcome a 3000-strong audience to our mini-Bethlehem Unwrapped Festival at Greenbelt this year which included music, dance, spoken word, testimony, poetry and Tom Pursey’s wonderful short documentary about B/U at St James’s Piccadilly.

Justin welcomed Harry Baker and Dizraeli; Palestinian dancers Al-Zaytouna; Catalan singer Clara Sanabras with partner Harvey Brough; Martyn Joseph and Garth Hewitt .

Tipping Point’s Ho-Chih recorded highlights from the event and if you’d like to get a taste of what a WONDERFUL afternoon it was, click here!

We were thrilled to welcome Revd Lindsay Meader and two of the brilliant Bethlehem Unwrapped WALL stewards, Debbie O’Brien and Mary Stewart, from St James’s Piccadilly. They shared their experiences and insights of the two weeks – and Linda Ramsden, director of ICAHD UK gave us all a reminder that, post Gaza, we need to be more engaged than ever.

There was an update on Leila Sansour’s film ‘Open Bethlehem’ and its forthcoming preview on 24th September at the RGS in London – and once again, we thanked Trust Greenbelt and all GB supporters for their ongoing backing for the film.

So, a huge thanks to all who came and for giving us such a memorable day at Greenbelt 2014…

Deborah, Justin & Ho-Chih

We hope this springtime finds you well and able to find at least a little bit of time to enjoy this beautiful time of the year… Here is our spring news update. Lots of good things happening and coming to fruition!  A few ‘save the dates’ to share with you:

• June 4^th: Our Bethlehem Unwrapped WALL auction & short film premiere (more below)
• June 8/9^th: We Are Many screenings at the wonderful Sheffield Doc/Fest (more below)
• August 24^th: Greenbelt – Bethlehem Unwrapped Mini-Programme
• September 24th: UK preview of Leila Sansour’s feature documentary Open Bethlehem (new title for film& campaign combined), at the Royal Geographical Society in London. (More event details to follow in our June/July newsletter)

FILMS

OPEN BETHLEHEM film & campaign

On May 15^th, we held a preview screening for funders, press and distribution partners, hosted by C4’s Jon Snow. The response to the film was excellent. Our plan is for a UK cinema release late autumn/early winter, after the RGS event in late September. TPFF will also be hosting previews in June for NGO/charity partners interested in the film’s outreach and campaign.

WE ARE MANY film

We are delighted that Amir’s film has been selected for two screenings at Sheffield Doc/Fest. Our wonderful Executive Producer Omid Djalili will join Amir and one or two of the film’s contributors for one of the post screening discussions on Sunday 8^th or Monday 9^th June. The film has recently secured a UK sales agent to sell the film internationally, as well as the support of highly respected film-maker and producer of many of Sam Mendes’ films, Pippa Harris. We are delighted to have her on board as one of our executive producers.  We’re aiming for a UK cinema release in autumn this year.

EVENTS

BETHLEHEM UNWRAPPED: short film premiere, exhibition and auction

Wednesday June 4th at 7.30pm at St Luke’s Church, Hillmarton Road, London N7 9RE (Nearest tube Caledonian Road, Piccadilly line, 5 mins walk. Doors open at 7pm. Admission is free / voluntary donation at the door).

Join us for the premiere of our Bethlehem Unwrapped short film by Tom Pursey; an exhibition of our WALL at St James’s Piccadilly followed by its auction! Funds to go to our B/U partner, The Holy Land Trust. We are working together with another Bethlehem Unwrapped partner, the P21 Gallery,  for this event.

The WALL was in place for two weeks from 23^rd December 2103; it had 30,000 visitors from all over the world and accumulated the graffitied drawings and messages of many of them. It became a major collective work of protest art, reported and reviewed by global television, radio, print and online publications, reaching a social media audience of 8 million via Twitter.

And if you can’t join us on 4^th June we’ll be sending out a link to Tom Pursey’s film after the event.

CAMPAIGNS

Tipping Point North South
Tipping Point North South’s main activity is our Film Fund, but as we now starting to widen our activity to include non-film specific projects( including the development of  our own in-house campaigns), we are undertaking this work under the TPNS banner.

The Five Percent Campaign – a Tipping Point North South initiative

We are delighted to have received a two year grant from the Polden Puckham Charitable Foundation as well as funding from a major donor to support the next stage of our military spending campaign. We are keen to take this issue to the mainstream development sector – we feel strongly that military spending is every bit as important to understanding the imbalance in relations between the rich world and the global south, as debt, trade, tax and climate change. Indeed, it is inter-connected with all of them. We are delighted to be developing this work with colleagues across the development, health, peace and environment sectors.

From Pink to Prevention – a Tipping Point North South campaign with The Alliance for Cancer Prevention

The film Pink Ribbons Inc highlighted the nature of corporate ‘pinkwash’; the takeover by business of a disease that has now become cloaked in ‘pink’ – the public are asked to engage with breast cancer primarily through fundraising, and via highly effective PR  campaigns.  But this swamping of the issue by ‘pink’ results in the marginalising of many unaddressed issues such as the role that the wider environment plays in breast cancer. Why is this?

We are working with The Alliance for Cancer Prevention to try and raise awareness about the ‘barriers’ to understanding what prevention is, what it means, what it looks like and why – most importantly- it is so marginalised by the mainstream cancer charities and government bodies alike.

To support our work on researching the ‘vested interests’ that we believe stand in the way of debating environmental and occupational links to breast cancer, we are delighted to have received a grant for this year from The Ratcliff Foundation.

Keep in touch

That’s our news for now – as ever, do drop us an email if you’d like to know more about any particular aspect of our work or if you’d like to support what we are doing.

Email info@tippingpointfilmfund.
You can also find us on FACEBOOK or TWITTER.

But before we sign off…

Celebrating Tony Benn…

We joined with all those who expressed their sadness at the passing of Tony Benn.  Stop the War are organising an evening to celebrate his extraordinary life on Thursday 5 June 6.30pm, Camden Centre, Judd Street, London WC1H 9JE. Tickets book in advance or call 020 7561 4830.

All the best from us at TPFF

‘As film-makers we’ve got to ask the big questions – not just look at the symptoms and go, “Oh there’s a victim, let’s tell their story.”’  Ken Loach