This week we were pleased to see our 2012 release Bombay Beach nominated for The Guardian 2012 'First Film' Award for director Alma Har'el. This award celebrates debut directors, with previous winners including Joanna Hogg's Unrelated, Gideon Koppel's Sleep Furiously, Clio Barnard's The Arbor and, last year, The Guard, directed by John Michael McDonagh.
To mark this achievement we are reducing the Bombay Beach DVD in the shop for the rest of the week as part of the Dogwoof DVD Shop January Sale - get your copy, jam packed with extras, for just £6.99.
We also have a copy of the film's UK cinema Quad poster signed by director Alma Har'el herself to giveaway. To enter simply Tweet (or Facebook) us the name of your own favourite debut film, made by a director on their first feature film outing. We will pick a winner next week.
The rusting relic of a failed 1950s development scheme, the Salton Sea is a barren California landscape often seen as a symbol of the failed American Dream. First-time director Alma Har’el visits this poetically fruitful terrain and finds there a motley cast, including a bipolar seven-year-old, a lovelorn high school football star, and an octogenarian poet-prophet. Together they make up a triptych of manhood in its decisive moments, populating the Salton Sea's land of thwarted opportunity. True to her roots as a photographer, video artist, and music video director, Alma Har’el crafts an adamantly atypical and artistically innovative film. Bombay Beach is a dreamlike poem that sets these personal stories to a stylized melding of observational documentary and choreographed dance, to music specially composed for the film by Zach Condon of the band Beirut, and songs by Bob Dylan. The result is a moving and madly inventive documentary experience - an evocative, symbolic portrait of rural America and its inhabitants
Find out more about Bombay Beach at www.bombaybeachfilm.co.uk