So last year I told you that we’d put out the most amount of posts since DN began back in ’06. Well rather than resting on our laurels we took it as a challenge to do even better in 2011 – which I’m happy to say we did with a whopping 770 published posts! That’s a ton of great content to work through, but where to start? El Vez and I sat down to give you our ultra slim CliffsNotes of the past year here on DN. There’s going to be a heck of a lot going on in 2012 so make sure you don’t fall behind by subscribing to our feed.

El Vez

January
2011 kicked off with a look back at the previous year, with the DN 2010 Top Ten, DN 2010 Year in Review and Future Shorts Best of 2010, as well as a look into the year ahead with the Films of 2011. Halfway through January, we got to talk to Noel Paul & Stefan Moore, the combined force known as That Go who directed one of my favourite music videos of the year, Senior, a short film created for Norwegian electronic band Röyksopp.

February
The 2nd month of 2011 turned out to be a packed one for DN with Julian Ross providing coverage of the 40th International Film Festival Rotterdam, as well as director interviews with Andrew S Allen, Matthias Hoegg and Ruben Östlund.

March
With a mix of eclectic films on display, the South by South West festival in Texas has become a regular attraction for DN in recent years. With the 2011 highlights including interviews with directors Jeanie Finlay, Spencer Susser, Tim Plester, Ben Wheatley and Athina Rachel Tsangari.

April
Even though April contained the viewing of two of my favourite feature films of 2011 in Essential Killing and Rubber, the highlight had to be TV on the Radio releasing the full length album music video Nine Types of Light comprising 10 promos and a spoof dojo ad by 11 different directors/teams.

May
The month of May was one ruled by Trolls, Douglas Burgdorff, a marathon running country music legend (Stray Dawg) and a Hobo with a Shotgun.

June
Whilst animators Leo Bridle and Ben Thomas took time out to talk to us about their film Train of Thought and Alex, Matt, and briefly MarBelle, reported from the Edinburgh International Film Festival, the film that managed to get the most attention on DN in June was Richard Phillips’ elegant portrait of Sasha Grey. I wonder why that could be?

July
We took a detailed look at the shortlisted films in this 2011 Rushes Soho Shorts Festival

August
The month of August is always a highlight in the DN year, as our annual takeover of the OFVM Cinema Tent saw us present our favourite short films and music videos to the Reading and Leeds Festival masses.

September
We don’t know why it took us so long, but September saw us launch the WeAreDN Vimeo Channel – now 800+ videos strong and counting. Think of it as a continually updated, DN curated festival.

October
Along with a fantastic article about creating an original score for your film, 7 Tips For Getting a Great Score for Your Film, October, as always, is the month of the London Film Festival.

November
Another Earth, Miranda July on Strangers, a Jean Marc Calvet documentary and music videos from Die Antwoord & Rammstein, made November a pretty bizarre month.

December
There is only one way to complete the year…the essential end of year list.

MarBelle

January
Danni (who we’ve come to miss dearly whilst she’s off making films) jumped us into the year with her coverage of the 8th London Short Film Festival and the tragic loss of Trish Keenan spurred us into creating a collection of our favourite Broadcast promos and performances. We also got to indulge our Metronomy/JUL & MAT addiction and Andrew S. Allen unleashed The Thomas Beale Cipher to puzzle and entertain the world.

February
Hitting our stride now, we looked in on some DN alumni with Stephen Irwin mixing up a batch of Horse Glue, Piers Thompson dropping by to chat about LIN and Ben Briand upping the weirdness with Some Static Started. We also saw one of our favourite animators, Eran Hilleli prove his chops in capturing music performance with his 1981 series of films.

March
As has become tradition, in March I was up to my ears in breakfast burritos, screenings and director chats at SXSW, but there was still lots of non-Austin action on DN. El Vez and I took a trip to the Efterklang Scala gig and London premiere of Vincent Moon’s An Island, Subs gave us her thoughts on Richard Ayoade’s awkward Welsh teen movie Submarine and Buck 65 got his Zombie Delight on.

April
This month we hit the big 200 on the podcast with Revel Fox and just before that Keith Bearden returned to discuss uglying up Kim Catrall for his first feature Meet Monica Velour. The Mahna Mahna song got a funnily dark revamp in Tune for Two, Sizemore and his 48hr team tackled time travel with PRECISION and Alex took us From Paper Cut to Fine Cut on his feature Life Just Is.

May
In May, we fell in love with Blue Valentine on DVD, got excited about slugs in Kurtis Hough’s Mossgrove / Bed of Moss, and peaked at Ben’s Hot Docs festival diary.

June
We saw the ante upped, first for festival titles in Mischa Rozema’s dystopian, totalitarian future Year Zero for OFFF Barcelona 2011 and then for effects package launches in the Magic Bullet Suite 11 powered Plot Device. We hid in an Untitled bunker with Craig Murray from The War of the Worlds, until Eddie O’Keefe let us pretend we were cool and hang with The Ghosts.

July
In July Subs came down with a case of Bad Fever, Claire Edmondson and Broken Social Scene got graphic about body disposal and we flicked through the beautiful pages of Yuki 7 and her crack team of super spies in Looks That Kill.

August
This was a month to rejoice in the independent spirit of film and crowd funding with Koo of nofilmschool launching the Kickstarter campaign for his debut feature Man-child (he slam-dunked a staggering $125,100), Small Town Murder Songs left a lasting impression and Comic Sans had finally had enough, asshole.

September
We love zombies. Shuffling, fast, we don’t care just give us more. So getting a peak at Undying Love and the opportunity to talk to the film’s director Omar Hauksson was braaaainns, I mean great. Bobby Miller finally put TUB in all its strange goodness online and we shared the wondrous experience of seeing Brent Green and team accompany Gravity Was Everywhere Back Then live.

October
Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive, a long overdue chat with Kristoffer Borgli and Brian Fairbairn’s Skwerl made for an interesting month of skewed reality watching.

November
In November Neil took his short It’s Natural To Be Afraid to the Kerry Film Festival and brought us along, Mike Ott joined us to chat about his fish out of place feature Littlerock and Azazel Jacobs convinced us he was on the side of the outsider in Terri.

December
It was crowned the overall DN film of the year so how could I not include our review of Martha Marcy May Marlene as a highlight of December. We also got to talk detailed sound design and punk rock filmmaking with Matt Lambert and Tom Haugomat & Bruno Mangyoku’s Tribute to Drive was on a par with the feature itself.

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