Rather than a daily diary entry, as I wrote for the Cannes Film Festival, I’m writing a mid-festival entry, in an attempt to expunge some of my thoughts on the BFI London Film Festival. Writing about film festivals, particularly one that you haven’t been to before, is a cathartic experience. This year I’ve tried to visit as many new film festivals as possible, and LFF occupies the autumnal, dying light of the circuit. It includes some of the greatest hits that have played all around the world this year, but if you live in Cambridge it’s far more convenient to visit than, say, Toronto or Rome.
There is a local feel to the proceedings here. A forty minute train journey will take you down into the heart of London, and into the heart of the festival. Screenings are taking place at BFI Southbank, Leicester Square, the ICA, Richmix in Shoreditch, and a couple of the bigger Picturehouse Cinemas in the capital (I suspect a certain Picturehouse Central will feature on that list for next year’s festival too, when the renovation of the Trocadero site is complete in Spring 2015). There are posters up around town, but London being London, it’s harder to get a sense of the festival taking place and taking over the city, as Edinburgh International Film Festival did in June; as London is just so damn big and has a veritable explosion of cultural activities taking place every day.
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So how does the festival feel unique? Well, the press screenings are taking place this year at the Odeon Covent Garden (actually located on Shaftsbury Avenue). And who should be managing the press screenings at that cinema but my friend and former Cambridge Arts Picturehouse colleague, Alicia. She is now the Assistant Manager at the Phoenix Picturehouse in Oxford, so it’s really rather lovely to see her smiling face every morning, and to see her climbing up the deep-set steps of the industry. I envisage seeing Alicia in ten or twenty years time, somewhere high up in the British Film Industry. She has that kind of aura about her.
There’s also a note of caution to be made. When entering that magical, time-travel like moment of a film festival, watching films months before their release at your local cinema, it’s very dangerous to then leave again after a couple of days. I came down to LFF at the weekend, then went back to work in Cambridge for the Monday, and resumed my activities in London again on Tuesday. I felt unduly stressed on the Monday, and somewhat shell-shocked on the Tuesday. Perhaps this was all due to the shift in cinematic tone I was putting my body through? In short, if you can, commit to a film festival for a run of days – I think you’ll enjoy it more as a punter. Heaven knows what it must be like in acquisitions, when you’ve got that buzz of the festival going on, but you’re also trying to manoeuvre around quite complex deals with sales agents and producers of “the next big thing” for your distribution company. That must require an extremely businesslike calm to rush over you and block out all the bright lights and deep red carpets. Do they hold a film festival in Las Vegas, I wonder?
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I’ve really enjoyed watching most of the films so far. I’ve found time to write a few reviews between screenings and in the evening. NATIONAL GALLERY, THE KEEPING ROOM, NE ME QUITTE PAS, BYPASS, X+Y, GOODBYE TO LANGUAGE 3D, MY OLD LADY, THE DUKE OF BURGUNDY, LOVE IS STRANGE, and WHIPLASH are where I’m up to so far. That’s a wide range of filmmakers and styles of films. The Odeon Leicester Square screening (1683 capacity), in which I watched WHIPLASH this morning has really impressed me. It’s how I imagine the Arts Picturehouse cinema used to look like in the 1940s when it was one big screen and known as The Regal. Is there any comparison between watching a film on your smartphone, and watching it in the cathedral-like space of this cinema’s auditorium? Convenience maybe, but at the expense of experience. I feel humbled to watch a film in a space like this. I also feel ever so slightly jealous of my grandparents, for whom a cinema-going experience like this was de rigueur.
Whilst there was a definite buyer’s market at Cannes, Edinburgh, and Sheffield, I’m not sure how much of that goes on here. The BFI’s headquarters on Stephen Street may be where all that goes on, but I haven’t ventured over there yet. Perhaps a trip for a day or two’s time? I don’t want to buy anything, just observe where it goes on, and pass on the aesthetics of the wallpaper and carpets contained within, in my next LFF diary entry. Places like the buyer’s market seem so far removed from the normalised media image of the idle movie pirate, downloading a film from a torrent site, and watching it at home, with maybe one or two friends. I’m not saying I’ve never watched a film in those circumstances before, but I am acutely aware I work in the British Film Industry, and there is a need for us all to support each other, to help maintain the offshoots of our jobs: from the cinema workers, to the film shops, local film critics, film studies students, camera manufacturers and scriptwriters – we’re all in it together, and a film festival like LFF epitomises that notion of collectiveness and solidarity within the business of entertainment. It’s a good industry to work in, and occasionally, if you book your holiday time the right way round, you get to come to lovely film festivals like this one.
Over and out for Wednesday 15th October, 2014 :)X
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