BFI 53rd London Film Festival 2009

Details

Parent Category: Film Festivals

Category: Previews

Published on Tuesday, 27 October 2009 23:15

Written by Lynne E Shannon

The Times BFI 53rd London Film Festival 2009 is being held October 14-29, 2009 at the BFI Southbank and the Vue West End, as well as the Odeon Leicester Square and Odeon West End.

Artistic Director Sandra Hebron has introduced this year's Festival saying, “We need films that appeal to our hearts as well as our heads. In which case I say, look no further than this year's Festival, where. . .you'll find plenty of films that work on many levels - from the formal precision of Lourdes to the intelligent sensuality of Bright Star; from the playfulness of The Men Who Stare At Goats to the damning critique of Mugabe and the White African and from the sheer cinematic brio of MICMACS to the generic updating of At the End of Daybreak. For me, just thinking about the breadth of work our programming team has chosen is exhilarating. And that's as it should be, given that the Festival spans continents and generic boundaries in the hope of celebrating cinema wherever creativity flourishes.”

This is definitely a someting-for-everyone festival. Not only is there a wide range of events between films and presentations, but within each category of events is a vast array of topics and issues, both past and present--and a few for the future.

The Opening Night film is the newest animation film, Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, with the voices of George Clooney and Meryl Streep heading the cast. The Closing Night film is Nowhere Boy, a story of the young John Lennon directed by Sam Taylor Wood.

Other special screenings include 

The Archive Gala, which will feature the newlly restored 1928 film Underground, directed by Anthony Asquith.

The Times Gala, presenting The Men Who Stare at Goats, directed by Grant Heslov and starring George Clooney, Ewan McGregor and Jeff Bridges.

The French Gala, presenting Father of My Children, directed by Mia Hansen-Løve.

The Centrepiece Gala presented by the Mayor of London, screening Jane Campion's Bright Star.

Panels include Environmental Filmmaking: Can Cinema be Truly Green?, and Snipping Away at the Celluloid Ceiling, discussing the status of women in film today.

In addition, Power to the Pixel, a Cross-Media Film Forum, held October 14-15, 2009, has become the leading event in the UK film industry calendar for connecting with key digital innovators in multimedia content.

For further information, go to www.bfi.org.uk/lff/.

• < Prev
• Next >