In 1956, television was still a novel luxury. In the UK at least, commercial television was only a year old and colour TV was over a decade away. Yet cinema was 70 years old at the time and it surely was a wonder of sound and Technicolor.
That year however, the charitable foundation Royal Charter took a foray into the burgeoning film festival movement beginning its title roll on the waters of Venice nearly a quarter of a century earlier (1932).
Six decades later, the BFI London Festival is a world leader and its red carpet is studded with the usual glitterati that descend from the Hollywood hills. This October, the autumn air in London will stay warm with the chatter and passion for cinema and for the first time in 60 years, the festival will be opened by a black British director. Amma Asante’s film, A United Kingdom, tells the story of a prince of Botswana marries a white British woman, a love story that prompted a furor at the time. It is Asante’s third directorial effort, her first film released in 2004.
Other films on the roster include a number of movies focused on the life and work of oddball director, David Lynch. Lynch is a man that has managed to amalgamate his penchant for the bizarre and surreal with mainstream Hollywood. With his movie Mulholland Drive being recently voted the best film of the 21st century so far, it heralded a celebration of the man’s leftfield and captivating work. A documentary catalogues the mind bending meanders of his life and work and Blue Velvet Revisited casts another eye over the photographic material and audio from behind the scenes of the par excellence starring Dennis Hopper and Isabella Rossellini.
Politics and the narrative of cinema ostensibly form the backdrop for this year’s festival. 9 Days – From My Window In Aleppo, is a short film that chronicles Syrian photographer Issa Touma capturing the initial attack on Aleppo at the beginning of the conflict. Director Pablo Larrain releases his sixth movie with a biopic on his namesake, poet and diplomat Pablo Neruda. The poet is on the run after the Chilean president begins to quash communism in 1948, the fleeing poet is pursued by a detective played by Gael Garcia Bernal. Legendary filmmaker Werner Herzog also hosts a talk and exhibition of his new film, Lo & Behold: Reveries of the Connected World. An odyssey of our interlinked journey towards the digital horizon.
Also showing at BFI London is Oliver Stone’s homage to NSA whistleblower and fugitive, Edward Snowden. Snowden stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the eponymous former NSA employee, now wanted by American authorities for exposing the level of the US’s spying on the public.
Sixty years is a long time and a long litany of films exhibited on London’s South Bank. The future of cinema has altered beyond reckoning during that time and teeters on the brink of an uncertain future in our age of countless films at the touch of a button.
Will the next 60 years see as much controversy and beauty and wonder as the movies take a further journey into tomorrow?
Article by Brad Yellop
