While there's good fun brilliance from Sam Pilling, Dean Blunt and Calmatic, promos from Spike Lee, Jake Schreier and Savanah Leaf hit home with political messages

Not wanting to make a spec spot, Bernd Faass distilled his own gin and created a real brand for his film, Tears in Heaven, a hit with the 1.4 Awards jury as well as taking the top prize at the Porsche International Student Advertising Film Award. We talk with the new director about his quirky, fastidiously crafted work and the booze in his basement

Blood, guts, and gore; rage, revenge and jealousy; get yourself a nice cup of tea and watch our second round-up of brilliant music videos

Hello 2019. Happy New Year you fabulous people and welcome back to the land of working and watching great films. We've spent the holidays cruising through music videos from the tail end of last year - some you may have seen like this beauty from Filip Nilsson for Justice. Who ever thought you could feel warm and smiley watching a Justice track? We dug deep and also came up with some buried treasures which we’ll be showing over the week.

Sundance loved it. And so did the 1.4 Awards jury. We talk with Georgi Banks-Davies about creating her brilliant short film Garfield. Is it a romantic comedy? Is it a drama about racial divide? It's a film about empathy, says the Skunk director

Marek Partyš’s film Jágrlama, a tale of a Tibetan boy who wants to become an ice hockey star like Czech player Jaromír Jágr, was loved and cheered by the crowd at the 1.4 Awards for its direction, warmth and humour. Marek’s latest work, however, a music video for Son Lux, is minimal, slick and icily cool. It’s also just as stunningly good.

Ian Robertson used to make music videos that we loved to showcase on 1.4 and then he went quiet. We talk with the unsigned director about his decision to go to film school and learn the art of narrative longer form.

Martin Garde Abildgaard's fabulously funny and perfectly observed short film, Lovebirds, was a hit with the 1.4 Awards Jury. Hot off the festival circuit, we are thrilled to bring you the online premiere

Multi-faceted director and creative Sophia Ray is no stranger to the world of music promos, having risen to directorial fame with her animated lyric video for Lily Allen in 2014. Now signed to Partizan, the director has turned her attention to live action and crafting darker narratives that offer twisted commentaries on modern society. Her latest spot for pop singer, Au/Ra, is a case in point in which she experiments with surrealism, researches robotic tendencies and battles tight deadlines.

Arriving to advertising following a career as a model, B-Reel Films director Lina Söderström was fascinated by the filmmaking process and longed to explore a new perspective. We caught up with Lina to chat about her transition into working behind the camera, considering all aspects of the project from the get go and creating a film out of a bookmarked idea.

Though darker than a big dark thing, Kenneth Karlstad’s arresting, award-winning short The Hunger flirts with a gentle humour in its portrayal of a young lad seeking the noir in ‘Norway’s New Jersey’. The Stink-signed Norwegian director’s trippy promos, impactful PSAs and spooky shorts display he’s as adept at menace and magical realism as he at sentiment and psychological truth. Here, he tells 1.4 about ‘the hunger’ in his own youth when he dabbled in petty crime and drugs, and how music and stream of consciousness are vital to his creative process.

Meet our fabulous line-up of commissioners, curators and creative geniuses who will be viewing and judging entries to the 1.4 Awards. Entries close on October 17th. The winners will be showcased at our Awards Show Party on November 21st in London

There was SO much brilliant work screened at the 1.4 Awards Show and we would happily have screened another couple of hours of films such was the extraordinary standard of entries. The 1.4 Jury – made up primarily of commissioners and creatives – got to see a lot of film work they wouldn’t otherwise have come across. Here we list the winning work that made it to the showcases – and also show some of the films that the jury loved. We will be bringing you a special showcase featuring the winning and shortlisted Short Films and Branded Content soon.

Kim Gehrig, 1.4's crowned queen of technical mastery and mind-boggling visual fun, has just released this joy to the world for Libresse, the brand we're all loving since Daniel Wolfe's period piece - a top favourite with the judges at the 1.4 awards.

BEST NIGHT EVER. THANK YOU ALL FOR MAKING IT SUCH A FABULOUSLY GOOD FUN CELEBRATION. WE'LL BE POSTING THE FULL SHORTLISTS AND THE JURY’S FAVOURITES ON MONDAY.

Meet our winners, winers, diners and party goers who made the 1.4 Awards Party of Brilliant Filmmaking such an inspirational evening

The news you've been waiting for....

Steve Rogers’ new quartet of spots for Amazon Prime Video, produced by Somesuch, wittily depicts TV heads transformed by their favourite shows. The justly award-laden director reveals how he and the Droga5 team behind the ads embarked on a relentless quest for the best, and talks about the link between building character and production design

Swedish director Olof Lindh has always recognised the alchemy required to pursue filmmaking as a viable career path. Thankfully, weaving his magic came rather naturally to Olof, who spent his childhood crafting projects, playing with different disciplines. Whether he was busy constructing a dark room at school or experimenting with homemade pyrotechnics; it was all a labour of love for him. His ascent into directing is unsurprising then, given his commitment to learning and developing himself, as well as his accurate understanding of how the industry operates. We caught up with Olof to discuss becoming a Biscuit-eer, bracing himself ahead of production and believing in the creativity of actors.

Sparks clearly flew between the Sweetshop and Australian director Joel Harmsworth and it’s easy to see why, given his recent work for the RSF. Drawing on his own experiences of escaping extinguishment, Harmsworth brings honesty on-set, preferring to work with children – rather than animals, approaching spots like silent films and playing quite literally with fire. Most surprising perhaps is his commitment to creating work as authentically as possible, deciding to lean on reality rather than rely on post – a tactic that’s bound to pay off

Gabriel Bisset-Smith’s portfolio is so prolific, so diverse and so good that we need another week off to finish viewing all of his short films, tv series, music videos, and really funny sketches. And now that he’s joined Dirty Work at Rattling Stick we’ll be seeing way more of it.

Niccolò Montanari talks with director / cinematographer Daria Geller about creating an intriguing fashion narrative that goes way beyond the catwalk for Russian label, Brier

As adept at directing the comedy of orgasmic opera singing as she is the tragedy of a family facing cancer or a sensuous music video for Seinabo Sey , Stockholm-based director Sheila Johansson has justly earned a slew of awards for work that is varied in tone, though always bears a strong visual style.

With now over twenty international fashion film festivals worldwide, fashion films certainly have their own dedicated festival circuit to engage with. 1.4 asked curator Niccolò Montanari to select those films screened at the recent Milan Festival that resonated with him for their visual language

Simple. Enigmatic. So goddamn compelling. And totally uplifting in its own mysterious way. Rob Chiu sat on his film idea for five years until he found the right time and place and then the perfect track - Kathryn Joseph's 1111

We talk with director John Merizalde about exploring online radicalization – “the dark parts of the internet and the dark parts of the human psyche” – in his latest short film, Incel

Matilda Finn brings her distinctive filmic language to interweave an electrifying car race through the woods with surreal dreamscapes of grief for Sophie Hunger’s track, Tricks. We talk with the young director about her portrayal of the Seven Ages of women

The directing founders of The Blink Fish creative collective, Giacomo Boeri and Matteo Grimaldi, shot this film for the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana to celebrate Milan Fashion Week. Video curator and publicist Niccolò Montanari talks with Giacomo about their creative development in the world of fashion, film and advertising.

Stink director Salomon Ligthelm has created an emotionally pitch-perfect film for a previously unreleased home studio cassette recording of Prince solo at his piano captured in 1983

Blaring our summer soul

Issac Lock has mastered lampooning the fashion world with his cleverly written scripts and fashionistas want, really really want, every bit of it. We talk with the recently-signed Somesuch director about his latest shoot with Victoria Beckham for Vogue and find out why he can articulate the language of fashion with such panache