Northern Lights Film Festival 2008: affable discussions of horrendous subjects

The Northern Lights Film Festival have posted some nice photos from this year's bash up onto a Facebook page, and already these bring back some funny memories - most particularly of the slightly surreal and riotous final night at the Baltic when the 'Big Pitch' talent competition was decided, and a substantive cash prize awarded to some suitably delirious young talent, followed by the compulsory elbow-raising beer 'n' wine frenzy at the bar next door.
Rewind about 4 or 5 hours and you get the tranquil scene here pictured: myself chairing a discussion on low-budget horror filmmaking in the Digital Lounge of the Tyneside Cinema; to the left of frame, the director Steven Sheil and his producer Lisa (they of the much-lauded Mum and Dad); to the right, the short filmmaker David Pope (and by that I mean a director of - very fine -short films, and not someone who's no taller than, say, Tom Cruise.)
Of course, the real horror of this scene was only to unfold a few minutes after I stepped off the platform and got on the phone, to learn that effing Stoke City had got their last-minute equaliser at Saint James's (see passim.) I won't bloody be forgetting that either...