David Farnor | On 19, Jun 2015

Festival-to-Date: Mark Cousins Hibrow Trilogy released at Edinburgh and on VOD

Mark Cousins’ Hibrow Trilogy will be released on VOD on the same day it screens at the Edinburgh Film Festival.

6 Desires, which follows Here Be Dragons and Life May Be, begins a European tour in the Scottish capital on Monday 22nd June (18.10 at Filmhouse 2), but for those who are unable to attend, all three movies will also be available to download from iTunes and Google Play.

The move is part of a new scheme from The TIDE Experiment. Dubbed “Festival-to-Date”, the initiative is carried out in partnership with The Festival Agency and aims to “empower some films that otherwise would have only a few lucky viewers attending the festivals”. Indeed, the scheme will not only release Cousins’ latest cinematic essay online in the UK, but in several European countries.

The TIDE Experiment is a European-Commission supported project committed to innovation in distribution and has already begun releasing international titles straight to VOD in themed bundles.

This summer, the Festival-to-Date scheme combines almost simultaneously four European festivals and VOD platforms: the trilogy will also screen at FID-Marseille in France on 3rd July, Karlovy Vary in Czech Republic on 6th July and New Horizons from 23rd July. One film will screen in each festival and the whole trilogy will be available online.

All three films are about culture – film in Tirana, bodies and architecture in Iran, the literary travel writing of DH Lawrence – but their forms aren’t traditional. Life May Be is a series of cine-letters, while 6 Desires has Mussolini, Helene Cixous and Paul Cézanne in it.

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