Festival News
White NightsSometimes there's no more illicit pleasure than spending a hot summer day in a cool dark room watching back-to-back films. With only one month to the programme deadline, this is pretty much the daily experience of our festival programmers at the moment...
Festival Artistic Director Sandra Hebron has seen many potential titles, visiting Amsterdam recently and Paris next week, with critic and programme advisor Jonathan Romney, to view some of the French films on offer. She also travelled to Italy with programme advisor Adrian Wootton for special screenings in the historic setting of Cinecitta, the restored studio near Rome where masters such as Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni famously worked.
Our East and Southeast Asia expert Tony Rayns has been in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan and South Korea to see new work and meet filmmakers, many of whom are showing him works in progress. He is also preparing the English subtitles for the world premieres of several important East Asian films, some of which we hope to screen in the festival.
Sarah Lutton, the festival's Nordic film programme advisor, visited the Norwegian Film Institute's equivalent of the NFT in Oslo to see new Norwegian work. She also visited the Filmbyen studios outside Copenhagen
- where a large proportion of Danish films are shot, including the work of Lars von Trier and Thomas Vinterberg - and the Nordisk film studios in Copenhagen (one of the oldest film studios in the world) to see new Danish films offered for festival selection.
Programmer Michael Hayden has been traveling around the UK watching some of the best new British work, including screenings hosted by Film London at Canary Wharf, and many of our other programme advisors are diligently working their way through the huge number of open submissions to this year's festival.
And with the submission deadline for short films now passed, new short film programmers Simon Young and Philip Ilson are busy putting together this year's short cuts and animation strand.
London Film Festival at the NFT
Finally, for those of you in London, there's an opportunity to catch the last screenings in July's 50 Years of the London Film Festival <http://www.bfi.org.uk/lff50> season at the NFT, which recreates the exceptional 1957 programme of the first ever London Film Festival.
Forthcoming films include Luchino Visconti's White Nights and the second part of Satyajit Ray's wonderful Apu Trilogy, Aparajito.
Find out more at www.bfi.org.uk/lff50
Images: White Nights, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and The Fallen Idol
bfi News
Carmen Maura & Pedro Almodovar season at the NFT <http://www.bfi.org.uk/almodovar>
Carmen Maura & Pedro Almodovar <http://www.bfi.org.uk/almodovar>
2 to 31 August 2006
In August, the NFT celebrates one of the best loved artistic collaborations in contemporary European cinema, including a special preview of Volver and The Guardian Interview with Pedro Almodovar and Penelope Cruz, live on stage.
Find out more at www.bfi.org.uk/almodovar
The Fallen Idol <http://www.bfi.org.uk/fallenidol>
Opens 28 July
The Fallen Idol <http://www.bfi.org.uk/fallenidol> The bfi releases a new print of Carol Reed's rarely screened masterpiece, The Fallen Idol.
This was the first collaboration between Reed and Graham Greene, one of the most significant writer-director partnerships in the history of film.
The release of The Fallen Idol is part of our celebration of the centenary of Carol Reed's birth, which includes new prints of some of his best films, and a two month retrospective at the NFT.
Find out more at www.bfi.org.uk/reed