The biggest event in the London film calendar – the BFI London Film Festival – kicks off this week. Secretive industry insider Ron Swanson gives you a heads-up on the good stuff this year.
Tag Archives: BFI
Psychomania
Britain’s finest ever zombie biker movie has come back from the dead, courtesy of the BFI and Scalarama. Spank The Monkey takes a ride with the Death Wheelers.
If you had to identify the best-loved post on MostlyFilm – and I mean properly loved, rather than merely popular because it comes high on a Google search for ‘young boy handjob’ – then I suspect that Ricky Young’s four-part series If My Calculations Are Correct would be a prime candidate. It acknowledges that we don’t watch films in a vacuum: the circumstances of their viewing are as important as the films themselves. IMCAC isn’t just about a collection of science fiction classics – it’s about young Ricky encountering them every Tuesday teatime on BBC2, and having his mind opened to a whole genre of cinema. Continue reading Psychomania
Dispatches from the LFF: The Second Review Round-Up
Laura Morgan and Ron Swanson delve further into the London Film Festival’s schedule and report on what they find…
Continue reading Dispatches from the LFF: The Second Review Round-Up
Dispatches from the LFF: The First Review Round-Up
At the midpoint (or thereabouts) of the 58th London Film Festival, some of our regular contributors talk a little about what they’ve seen so far…
It Follows by Ron Swanson
Continue reading Dispatches from the LFF: The First Review Round-Up
A Night at the Cinema in 2014
Want to travel back in time to 1914? Well, hurry up and invent time travel, then. Want to watch a bunch of films first shown in 1914? The BFI has just the thing, and Emma Street has done you a preview.
Master Chef – Babette’s Feast
by Josephine Grahl
Based on a short story by Danish author Karen Blixen (who also wrote as Isak Dinesen), Babette’s Feast (1987) tells the story of two sisters, Martine (played by Birgitte Federspiel) and Philippa (Bodil Kjer) who live in a remote fishing village on the western coast of Denmark. Daughters of a Christian pastor who leads his own sect based on self-denial and austerity, after his death they preside over his dwindling flock, doing good works and living a simple, austere life. Continue reading Master Chef – Babette’s Feast
Back Issues
Spank the Monkey and Clio attempted to review the BFI’s new digital archive for Mostly Film. With mixed results…
Spank The Monkey:
I love Sight and Sound magazine, even though I hold it personally responsible for the mediocre 2.2 degree I attained at university. It’s true. Much of my final year at Manchester was spent in the campus library, desperately trying to undo the results of two previous years of hedonism largely based around the university’s excellent Film Society. But during a break in studies one day, I discovered that the library had bound volumes of Sight and Sound (and its companion review magazine, Monthly Film Bulletin) going back several decades. The study breaks got longer and longer after that, ultimately leading to the Desmond that blights my academic record to this day.
I had a massive Proustian rush when I recently visited the new library at BFI Southbank, and found those same bound volumes taking pride of place on its shelves. So imagine my delight when I discovered shortly afterwards that it was now possible to access every issue of S&S and MFB online, through the newly-created Sight & Sound Digital Archive. Well, that’s the theory, anyway.
Going Loco at the BFI Southbank
by Phil Concannon
January is a dismal month. Grey skies, biting winds and post-Christmas debts tend to darken the mood for the majority of us, but this weekend LoCo – a not-for-profit organisation dedicated to supporting comedy filmmaking – did its best to raise spirits with the inaugural LoCo Comedy Film Festival at the BFI Southbank. Over the course of four days, the festival’s eclectic programme served up a variety of shorts and features, Q&A’s, educational events and even a special presentation of a film that doesn’t exist. The combination of old and new, of dark comedies with breezy slapstick, ensured that the festival genuinely offered something for everyone. In fact, if you’ve long harboured a desire to see a tiny man crawl out of a cat’s anus…well, the LoCo Film Festival was the only gig in town. Continue reading Going Loco at the BFI Southbank
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