Film festivals are situated, yes? Where? You can’t pry them from places; Cannes, Berlin, Milan, Clapham. Simon would tell you that Clapham was a village before London engulfed it. Simon’s our head honcho. I am CIFF’s chief lackey. In a feat of I-don’t-know-what I managed to coup festival coverage and assemble a team of voices that owed me a favour. Leon and SEJ are fellow sons of Guernsey, albeit not native, and I met Trip last year when we were pretending to look at the same shelf of DVDs.

Leon is an idea more than he is a man. The idea of good conversation, a good idea, sparks something in you, and—and it’s gone. Leon was in my English class. He lost his timetable the second week so he’d just turn up where he thought his classes were. I found this very funny and if he ever didn’t quite make it to English I would go find him and our teacher would let me because it was always better with him there.

SEJ is a bit younger than us and I helped him with his English GCSE. He wrote how he spoke and the exam board didn’t like that but I did. He is singular—a whirlwind in a flat cap—and he doesn’t like that no one in London says hello to you.

I owe Trip a lot. He welcomed me into his life when I needed a new lease on it and either actually enjoyed or pretended to enjoy my short film. The DVDs incident was at a screening of it, we’d both come alone and needed to look busy. I’m glad he called me out on it. He’s a talent with a pen and I thank him for finally letting me look in his sketchbook.

Anna and Anna and Eliza are volunteers. Anna is Norwegian and runs the artist lounge. Anna is Canadian and seems far more useful than the rest of us. Eliza is Australian and happy to entertain SEJ.

I met Simon at one of CIFF’s short film nights. I’d gotten there an hour early because—despite rejecting my submission—he had replied to my email and, that being the furthest I’d ever gotten, invited the rattle of my cup.

‘Great opportunity for exploitation!’ is how I signed off my response.

‘Noted,’ is how he started his. The rest is history. Insignificant history, yes, but not for me. That night Simon tells me that no one cares about shorts so he’s given people somewhere to put them. This colours him well; frank, but charitable. You might mistake his frankness for cynicism, I have, but I don’t think film festivals can run on cynicism. Look at him giving me a chance. He’s funny too, in the way that makes you hope you’re in the audience for his asides and never sharing the stage with him. An Anna thinks he’s too laid back but the festival does seem to happen. Maybe he’s good on his feet.

Maybe he just has Ieva. I’ve spent less time with Ieva but look at anything CIFF and you’ll see Ieva’s touch. She was kind enough to give the magazine a once over and whether that was sincere or not she still did it. Ieva edited the former festival publication, Circa, which has a cooler name than us. We pay respects to her and all the CIFF lackeys.

So, where? Where is CIFF? Maybe I’ve already answered that. It’s in Clapham, I suppose. It’s also in the kitchen of my second-floor Limehouse flat—we would write on the table Leon slept beside drinking bad tea—and it’s in Bank station too. Bank was our gateway to the South and we would talk about the films as we pushed through it and one night we ran into Anna there and then she would talk about the films with us as we pushed through it. On the District Line she asked me if I knew much Tarkovsky and instead of shaking my head I found myself just looking at Leon who you can bank on knowing much Tarkovsky.

Our opening nights were in the Picturehouse on Venn Street, which Leon points out is a great name for a street. I felt like a nuisance at the Picturehouse but I think Simon actually likes being a nuisance and leant into it. To say we put up posters would be true but not reflective of just how many posters we put up. We ended the festival at the Omnibus Theatre, on the way to which I saw both the assembly of a pig zipline and a Christmas concert by infants. The festive spirit is alive in Clapham. The artist’s lounge was in the Brew and Barrel and the festival sounded like Pink Moon.

It’s true that I can’t talk about CIFF without mentioning the Half Moon, where we ate breakfast most days and ended them all. Bazin talks about film festivals and rituals, this was ours. She's known by many names—Stepney Green Spoons, the watering hole, an oasis, pub—but she served us well. Long live the £2 pint and the passion it encourages for cinema.