Few people know more filmmakers than the founder of London, England’s Raindance Film Festival, and the British Independent Film Awards, than Canadian-born Elliot Grove.
But it didn’t start that way.
Elliot was born Amish Mennonite outside Toronto on a mixed dairy farm. As a youngster, he was always cautioned never to go to the cinema – because the Devil lived there. And since 1992, he has been doing the Devil’s work.
Growing up in a Christian background and surrounded by Bible stories, Elliot developed a deep love of storytelling. He remembers going to church on a Sunday. While the elders worshiped upstairs, one, the man with the long gray beard, would shepherd the youngsters downstairs for Sunday school. One Sunday, after church, he got home for lunch. He was wailing his eyes out. When his mother asked what was wrong, he said: “Daniel is stuck in the Lion’s Den. We need to rescue him, or he will be eaten alive!” And he couldn’t sleep for three nights. Later that year, about Easter, he started crying again. “What’s wrong now?” His mother asked. He replied: “That baby that was born in the barn, why did they kill him when he grew up?” And again, three sleepless nights followed.
A move to Somalia
When he was ten, his father, Merlin Grove, had what he called “The Call of the Lord.” He decided to abandon farming to become a missionary. His figure was slight and not readily suited to the rigors of farm labor. He decided he would go to an area of the world where no other missionaries of any race or creed have ever been. Elliot, his parents, and brother and sister ended up 70 miles inland from Mogadishu on the Ogaden desert. They lived in a tiny village of 500 on the banks of the Shebelle River. The Shebelle winds down from the Ethiopian highlands towards Mogadishu. And there, a very young Elliot was surrounded by stories.
Being equatorial, the sun rose and set at about six each day, and the dawn and dusk lasted about 30 minutes. As the sun was hovering over the horizon, the villagers would gather in the center of the village to build a fire. The elder, the one with the beard, would say, “Let me tell you a story. Actually, it’s not a story, it’s a true story. I know it’s true because my father told me, and his father told him, all the way back to the prophets Abraham and Moses.” He began to recount a story about heroes and heroines from 800 years ago and if the elder made a mistake, the others would correct him. Somali at that time was an unwritten language, and these stories were told by generation after generation, a bit like Homer’s Iliad.
Two years to the day of their arrival in Somalia, a Sheik in the Ethiopian Highlands heard there was a Christian in town. And he walked two weeks to where Elliot’s father was teaching and slew him. This make Elliot’s father the first Western victim of Al-Qaeda (which started in that part of the world). The assassin said he was seeking revenge for the rape and pillage of his village by the last crusaders who got lost in that part of the world 800 years ago. From witnessing that horrible event, Elliot learned how embedded hatred is. He is appalled by the violence in Sudan, Myanmar, Ukraine, and most recently in Gaza and Israel.
Elliot moved to London in the mid-’80s and worked as a property developer renovating flats in the center of London. In 1991, a cruel recession swept the United Kingdom. Interest rates rose to 24%, and property values fell by 50%. Elliot lost everything.
At that time, he was living in a National Trust property outside London – a property a thousand years old, with walls a yard thick. The tenant farmer who had the surrounding 50 acres knew that Elliot had gone bust, and for a whole year saw him morose and depressed. One day he called him on it and said: “As long as you’re feeling sorry for yourself, there’s not a single doctor in the world that can help you.” Elliot sought the wisdom of the farmer and asked, “What should I do?” The farmer said: “Do what you love.”
Elliot’s first movie
It was at that moment that Elliot remembered the very first film he saw. He was sixteen, it was harvest season, and a machine broke down on the farm. He was the one sent to the local village’s blacksmith. When he found out the repair was going to take 3 hours, it wasn’t worth going all the way back home to turn around. It was a hot summer’s day, he had a few coins in his pocket, he was wondering what the devil looked like. And there it was, a few doors down – the house of the Devil – the movie theater.
He paid his 99 cents and walked into a large room that looked a bit like a church, chairs lined up facing the front. He sat down. It was about 2 pm in the afternoon. He noticed that the fabric on the chairs was red, “Ah, the color of the devil” he thought. The teenaged Elliot had no idea what a movie was. He was just told never ever to go to the cinema.
They turned the flipping lights off. The curtains slowly opened. And the first movie he saw, at the tender age of 16, was Lassie Comes Home. He was so impressed that, at the end, he rushed to the blank screen to see if he could feel the texture of the fur and the trees. It was all gone in the twinkling of an eye. He was totally hooked.
1992 The Birth of Raindance Film School
Flash forward to 1992, Elliot was at a low point. Being entrepreneurial, ran into an American guru of filmmaking, Dov S-S Simens, and Raindance Film School was launched. First with short and weekend courses, but expanded from 2012 to teach degree courses. Raindance Film School now offers an accredited 2-year Higher National Diploma, a BA, and MA programmes in filmmaking and screenwriting. Raindance also has campuses in Dubai, Mexico City, and London with over 200 students from 14 countries. They learn by doing. In 2023, the students completed 42 short films and are currently in post-production on three features.
1993 The Birth of Raindance Film Festival
In 1992, when Raindance started, there were only six features made that year – one of them was Stephen Frears’ My Beautiful Laundrette. It was a far cry from the heyday of British filmmaking in the ’70s and ’80s. Back then, Britain produced over 100 features a year if you count all the stake-through-the-heart Hammer House of Horror films, and the Carry-on films.
But Elliot and the people he reached, new filmmakers like Edgar Wright (who volunteered at Raindance for 9 months), couldn’t get their films into either of the two dominant British festivals at the time: Edinburgh and London. Sitting around a table one day in their tiny basement office, Edgar, Elliot, and Elliot’s partner, Suzanne Ballantyne, decided to start a festival.
Not knowing anything about a film festival but knowing they needed films, Elliot circled 100 films in that year’s Cannes Market Guide because they had a fax number. Elliot faxed 100 invite letters out. He was so broke he had to use a single piece of paper and used Whiteout to reenter the person’s name. The faxes cost £1 a fax, and Elliot had a budget of £100. Sixty-seven films accepted the invitation, and the festival was born! One of the films was the European premiere of What’s Eating Gilbert Grape.
Over the years, Raindance has focused on debut films, screening Christopher Nolan’s debut film The Following, and in 1999 his next feature, Memento. In 2000, Raindance screened The Blair Witch Project. The festival rose in stature and is now considered one of the top 15 film festivals in the world (by Variety Magazine).
The festival has always led with innovation. In 2012, short films at Raindance became Oscar and BAFTA qualifying. In 2013, Raindance became the first festival to showcase a web series. By 2016, it became the first film festival to showcase immersive VR and gaming content. In 2023, the festival showed 38 features, 122 short films, and 30 VR immersive games.
1998 The British Independent Film Awards
By 1998, Elliot realized that there was an explosion of independent films in the UK. Many of the filmmakers had touched Raindance Film School and the festival. However, he felt that there wasn’t enough noise being made about the films made by newcomers.
BAFTA at the time was mired in giving accolades to the big-budget Hollywood films. It was largely dismissed by the new generation of filmmakers. Seeing the opportunity, Elliot decided to launch an awards show for this bright and fresh new talent. He put together an Advisory Committee composed of the great and the good he’d met. And in a few short weeks launched the British Independent Awards in the autumn of 1998.
The inaugural BIFA was a humble affair in a hotel in Piccadilly, London. Awards went to Guy Ritchie’s Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, the then-unknown Ray Winstone, and the British legend, Ken Loach.
Elliot says that the awards were a success because of the quality of the jury. Composed of a combination of industry insiders and celebrities, having your film seen by the right people meant your film’s success (and the success of the filmmaker) became more likely.
Since that first year, the BIFA’s have become an established event held on the first Sunday in December. It is deliberately held at the end of the year. Not only has it become a pre-Christmas bash, but it is the first international award ceremony of the season, predating the Emmys, the Oscars, BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and European Film Awards.
BIFA, starting as Elliot’s dream, has become a highly credible event. And Elliot feels that the success is largely because all the nominees and attendees feel like they own it. BIFA is a registered charity. If you are ever lucky enough to attend, you will sense the passion and joy in the room.
Raindance Raw Talent – the Skunk Works
Elliot’s role in Toronto, spearheading new research into medical and computer technology, led him to the term Skunk Works. According to the dictionary, Skunk Works is slang often referring to a secret experimental laboratory or facility for producing innovative products, as in the computer or aerospace field, ideal, he thinks, to be adapted for independent film production. A disruptive and countercultural way to produce exciting content is the Raindance Raw Talent model.
Elliot knows that quality films can be produced at a fraction of the cost of costly Hollywood films. He also knows that filmmakers with bold, fresh and innovative projects are rejected at the doors of Hollywood. Why? Hollywood, and the film industry in every country, only make films that are, in their opinion, marketable. They also seek to de risk their massive investments by paying huge fees to talent, ie: film stars.
The reason Elliot thinks that the time is now for Raindance Raw Talent? “Everyone is screaming for content. The cinemas, the streamers, everyone wants movies. But the door to film production is firmly closed to newcomers. I have watched the painful birth of so many careers. From my first volunteer, Edgar Wright, to Christopher Nolan to Gareth Edwards (Star Wars). Raindance Raw Talent will be an open door to undiscovered talent. With what we have learned about film festivals, awards and distribution, we can monetise these new projects.”
Raindance is vertically integrated. To make films you need a script. Raindance has run a successful script competition with over 1500 entries each year; a motherlode for production. Our film school is taught by working industry professionals. Camera, sound and editing professionals supervise the rest of the crew filled by our excellent students. The films can start their sales and distribution journey at our festival. The question is, how can these films be funded? The films that are culturally diverse, the films about the whistleblowers and the disenfranchised, the films championing social impact issues.
A new way to make movies
Elliot has teamed up with a British Financier Byron Rose who has become Chairman of Raindance. They have major plans to disrupt and enhance the British Film Industry with a focus on Independent Film with its Skunk Works way of operating at its core.
By contacting Raindance Raw Talent, their financial experts can help you navigate the benefits of investment / donations through both the American and British tax systems. These advantages could mean a net zero cash position to a donor or an investment directly with an equity position in the next big thing and newly discovered talent.
The time is now. Get involved. Contact RawTalent@raindance.co.uk
Sibyl Cooper is a London based writer and musician working for Raindance Film School. Their writing explores neurodivergent perceptions of the natural world, with their most recent essay, ‘Metamorphosis’, available in Speculative Nature Writing: An Anthology, set for release in Summer 2023. Under the alias Scarlet Early, they write and produce gothic metal and industrial music.
