Elliot Grove is a Canadian-born film producer who founded both the

Raindance Film Festival Raindance is an independent film festival and film school that operates in major cities including London, Los Angeles, New York, Vancouver, Toronto, Montreal, Budapest, Berlin, and Brussels. The festival was established in 1992 by Elliot Grove t ...

in 1993 and the

British Independent Film Awards The British Independent Film Awards (BIFA) is an organisation that celebrates, supports and promotes British independent cinema and filmmaking talent in United Kingdom. Nominations for the annual awards ceremony are announced in early November, ...

in 1998.

Biography

Despite being unable to watch TV or films until his early teens due to the constraints of his

Mennonite Mennonites are groups of Anabaptist Christian church communities of denominations. The name is derived from the founder of the movement, Menno Simons (1496–1561) of Friesland. Through his writings about Reformed Christianity during the Radi ...

background, Grove was curious about art and film. He, thus, followed up formal art school training at

Central Technical School Central Technical School (CTS or Central Tech) is a Canadian composite high school in Toronto, Ontario. The school is run by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB); before 1998, it was run by the Toronto Board of Education (TBE). Central Tech ...

Toronto Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the anch ...

with a series of jobs behind the scenes in the film industry. Working as a scenic artist on 68 feature films and over 700 commercials in his native Toronto, he developed a distaste for the wasted resources on set and

union Union commonly refers to: * Trade union, an organization of workers * Union (set theory), in mathematics, a fundamental operation on sets Union may also refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Union (band), an American rock group ** ''Un ...

bureaucracy that prevented aspiring filmmakers like himself from getting their own features off the ground.

Raindance

Elliot moved to London in the late 1980s and in 1993 he launched th
Raindance Film Festival
a festival devoted to

independent filmmaking An independent film, independent movie, indie film, or indie movie is a feature film or short film that is produced outside the major film studio system, in addition to being produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies (or, i ...

and its emerging talent. In 2009 he was awarded a doctorate from the Open University at Plymouth College of Art. Initially, Raindance catered mainly to American independent filmmakers, but over the years the participants have become more global. The 2020 festival line-up included nearly one hundred independent features and 150 shorts, web series, music videos and VR experiences selected from submissions from 119 countries.

Course Instruction

Elliot lectures on screenwriting and filmmaking throughout the UK, Europe, North America and Japan. In 1992 he set up the training division of Raindance which now offers short masterclasses on writing, directing, producing and marketing films on a budget.

Publications

In 2001 Focal Press published his book: ''Raindance Writers Lab: How to Write and Sell the Hot Script''. His second book, ''Raindance Producer’s Lab Lo-To-No Budget Filmmaking'' was published by Focal Press in July 2004. 150 Workouts To Becoming A Filmmaker was published by Barrons (USA 2009) and has since been translated into French, German, Spanish and Italian.

Production

Upholding the ethos of Raindance, Elliot wrote, produced and directed 1997's feature, ''Table 5'', for just over £200.https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286191 His production company operates under the Raindance banner and is currently developing a slate of ten features. In 2005 he produced ''The Living and the Dead'' an arty British chiller, the world premiere which was at the Rotterdam Film Festival in January 2006. Elliot stopped producing features between 2007 and 2012 because of his involvement with Raindance. In early 2013 he re-launched production with the stylish thriller '' Deadly Virtues: Love.Honour.Obey.'' which started principal photography in May 2013. It was written by Mark Rogers and is directed by cult film director Ate de Jong (''Drop Dead Fred'').

References

External links

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Elliot Grove's Twitter
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grove, Elliot Year of birth missing (living people) Living people British male screenwriters British film directors British film producers British self-help writers Canadian emigrants to England Screenwriting instructors