My body clock is still a mess. I wake up at 5 and spend a couple of hours trying to get back to sleep listening to radio 4 on my iPhone but that doesn't work so eventually I quit trying and hit the streets.
Today I head north towards Union Square. There's a farmers market selling food and spices, but also an art market, graffiti style screen printed shirts and Puerto Rican coffee. There a really cool stall (below) selling single frames of Hollywood movies embedded onto frosted glass night lights. We get chatting. He's a projectionist and has scored a load of old reels and off cuts - from King Kong to Star Wars. I walk away with a frame of Harold Lloyd's Speedy from 1928.
Today becomes a day of people and little dogs. If I ever come back to NYC I'd spend my days filming them. Walking between blocks you’re guaranteed to see at least two New Yorkers walking a Pekinese, sausage dog or Cockapoo. One small step at a time Peter and Charles are making their way through the hustle and bustle with a little Pug dog called Angel. Angels back legs don't work any more so she wheels herself very slowly around East Village on a dog walker Peter built. Apparently Angel has already featured in 2 books.
Back on Broadway I pass a burned out car on the way to Maddison Square Park. Some folks just walk past as if they've seen one every day.
Then I met Reggie (below) on East 19 and Broadway. He was very politely asking for change. I nearly walked by then stopped and gave him $2. He shook my hand and I was shocked how cold his hands were. We get chatting. I ask him where he slept last night. Reggie hadn't slept for 2 nights. He'd been riding the subway but was trying to raise $20 so he could stay in a shelter for 3 or 4 days in what he called a "cot". I look in his paper cup and ask him what he has - about 3 dollars and some change. I give him another $5. Reggie's apartment had got burned out 2 years ago. He'd lost everything except the clothes on his back. He says he hopes it will never happen to me. I walk on grateful for all that I have.
It's midday and I head back to Village East Cinema to watch some films. There's a heart wrenching film made by a news reporter lady I met at the launch party about the wild Mustangs that are rounded up by the government by helicopter and sent for slaughter. Then I sit in on a film about the NYC horse drawn cabbies. A real estate company is trying to force them from their stables and there's been a huge public campaign to stop it. There's a panel talk that gets heated when someone in the audience questions one of the cabbies about the welfare of the horses. But like in the UK horses are on the road by right - cars need a license.
By 5 o'clock my head’s mashed from so many films so I stroll back to Winston's to get cleaned up before the awards tonight.
On the corner of Winston's block I am reminded about the have/have-not divide. There must be over 200 people queuing around the park for a soup kitchen. What has struck me about all the homeless I've either walked past or stopped to talk to is that they have all been so polite and humble. There's none of the edginess you often get from homeless in England.
Back on 7th street there's a crowd of youngsters taking selfies in front of some amazing graffiti of a kid with a ghetto blaster. The ghetto blaster is some kind of utility box that sticks out of the wall. I have to walk onto the road to get past.
I end up walking up and down the street 4 times to find Winston's and then check the street signs to make sure I'm not on the wrong block. But this is definitely 7th street off 1st Avenue so I head back one more time. The kids have gone and Winston's doorway is right next to the graffiti. It wasn't there this morning, the whole wall has changed since I left this morning and Winston's wall has a new piece of art - a kid with a ghetto blaster.
The awards are in the Ukrainian Centre a couple of blocks down from Village East Cinema on 2nd Avenue. There's food and a free bar. I bump into Geert, a Belgian filmmaker I met at the launch who now lives in Texas. We grab a table. The news reporter who made the film about the Mustang roundup sits next to me and next to her is Cynthia, who used to be a fashion photographer and hang out with Josef Koudelka now a Magnum photographer who made his name photographing Gypsies. When I was at college, Koudelka was (and still is) my hero. Cynthia is now a serious show jumper. She's interested in my Fell Ponies. She shows me pictures of her barn and stables which are as big as a field. She is very proud of her house which is ancient by American standards - 100 years old. When she's not at home she's at her other home in Florida. I get the feeling she had been a very successful fashion photographer.
The ceremony gets underway. And the 2nd award of the evening for Best Music Video is PONY! I win a gold (plastic) statue and a bag of goodies. Nathan and Dave - the Brits I've been hanging out with win two awards. Then best short film goes to Live Before You Die! I've won again - 2 out of 2!
Nathan picks up another and a film I saw on the first day beautifully shot by another English girl called Sophie wins the last award of the evening. The Brits have made their mark in New York.
A lady comes over to congratulate me. She'd flown in from Canada the night before. The first film she'd seen at the festival was Live Before You Die and she said it was so beautiful and free and it had really touched her. Tears well up in my eyes. That film has been around the world and is in 4 languages. Once It won £50 but apart from that it has never made me a bean, I have spent money every time I have gone to see it in a film festival. When a film touches someone enough for them to come up and tell you that, you can't ask for more. It was worth flying 4000 miles to meet that lady and hear her say that.
We still have time to make it back to watch PONY so the UK entourage of about 10 heads back to the cinema. Winston turns up as well. While we're waiting we lay out awards out in a line on the cinema seats for a "now or never" group statue photo. They all love PONY and one of the audience from LA says she's already seen it and shared it across Facebook.
We move screens for the last film of the festival. Nathan and John have made a film called The Island Project with Emma Massingale who spent a month on a deserted island off the coast of Ireland with 6 Connemara ponies that she trains. It's an amazing piece of work and we sit in the cinema for half an hour after chatting to Emma about her experience.
Before we leave, the festival organiser Lisa thanks us all and pleads with us to submit a film next year. We hit a bar on 2nd Avenue and drink till very late. That was a very good day.