I just stumbled over this site, & realized we had no thread for this short film. Apparently it was never released. If anyone has or can find more info, please post! At least it's got a few pics. Of Simone. As a... blonde. :innocent

http://www.bird-house.co.uk/

I will add this to my list of things to look out for! I'm not sure how much luck I will have ... but I will try to find it!

Probably only slightly less impossible than Isle of Voices (1995), which looked so hopeless in terms of finding it I didn't even make a separate thread for it. Sigh. But who knows, maybe this was aired on TV once & someone has a copy on VHS.... Well, a girl can dream.

I think "The Isle of Voices" might have been shown as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival (at the arthouse film cinema) in 1995 then disappeared into oblivion. Sadly the EIFF don't seem to have any online records for that year but I stumbled across a review written by an ordinary punter ...

Edinburgh Fringe and Film Festivals 1995 .... 21 August: 18:00--19:22 DEFF: "The Isle of Voices" & "STRANGE STORIES .... The anthology film STRANGE STORIES was preceded by a previously unannounced short, "The Isle of Voices" (based on the Robert Louis Stevenson short story). It's about a man who discovers his father-in-law is a sorcerer who can transport himself and others to the "Isle of Voices" to collect treasure. The short was a modernized version, complete with transportation effects influenced by Dr. Who, and seemed the sort of thing that would be shown here as a "young adult" type show. (Maybe that's just because it lacked sex, and the main character looked and acted more like a large teenager than a married man.) Look for it--it's not great, but it's well done and fun."

As for "Bird House", apparently it premiered in May 2005. Must have been a local showing as a couple of months later, it was available for viewing by request at the 2005 Edinburgh International Film Festival (see P65) I presume they mean distributers etc can request to view it? I tried looking up the director and this site (updated in March 2007) says "Bird House has recently been picked up by Big Film Shorts for international distribution." It isn't mentioned on the Big Film Shorts website so don't know if the deal fell through or not. So it might yet appear ....

ETA - forgot to mention (in case anyone was interested) that "Bird House" also appeared as part of the San Gio Video Festival 2006 in Verona, Italy.

Many thanks for the updates, every scrap of info very much appreciated! :) Least it looks like there's still hope for seeing Bird House at some point... I'd agree the 'request' thing is prob for distributors.

Found a small blurb on a semi-inert SL site ( http://www.freewebs.com/barb_l_amy/news.html ) from 2004:

' 25.10.2004: The Birdhouse Later this year on our screens. [SL] stars in The Bird House, a low budget flick set in Essex. “I play the mother of a fairly eccentric family, whose husband lavishes all his attention on this little bird in a cage rather than on the family.” She says. “The story goes that we have to leave our children in the house to be looked after by their 17 year old sister, and of course the bird vanishes.” “So, it’s all about the shenanigans of the daughter going out to replace the bird, and so on. It has a poignancy to it, it says a lot about family relationships, from within the dynamic of quite a dark piece.” '

(She doesn't cite where she got the quote from.)

I got paranoid the Birdhouse website might vanish so went back to get the caps. Site states this was filmed in Nov, 2003.

con'd...

First one is the final of the 5 film-caps; next is the first of the 3 'location' shots.

Last 2 location shots.