#BFI classics

[notesonfilm1]

José Arroyo In Converssation with Alastair Phillips on Tokyo Story (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953)

I’ve been wanting to talk to Alastair Phillips about his ‘BFI Classic’ monograph on TOKYO STORY (Yasujiro Ozu, 1953) since it was first published late last year. I found reading the book after watching the film truly illuminating, deepening and enriching the experience: a real achievement with a film already so familiar. It draws on Japanese sources not yet available in English, offering new…

[rickchung]

Kneecap (dir. Rich Peppiatt).

[The] controversial West Belfast hip-hop trio, [...] known for rapping republican lyrics in their native Irish language, star in their own titular biographical film about their rise to fame and infamy. Set in 2019, [...] Peppiatt directs the plainly titled Kneecap with an energetic, riotous verve to its provocative, explicitly anti-UK material of rebellion.

[synthient]

Me: they hated him for being hot and autistic 😔

The book, not 3 sentences later:

[godzilla-reads]

🐉 BFI Film Classics: Spirited Away by Andrew Osmond

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

Andrew Osmond writes about the popular Studio Ghibli film “Spirited Away” in this insightful study of the movie from a film perspective. He unpacks the movie’s visual language and makes connections between “Spirited Away” and other Miyazaki works, while also connecting it to other international movies as well.

This was a very interesting book that looked deeper into the symbolism, beauty, and metaphor of one of my favorite movies. I do think that the insight was from a western perspective, but there were some parts that I found exceptionally fascinating, like how “Spirited Away” came to be a movie. I liked the behind-the-scenes information a lot.

[silentlondon]

Book news: The Red Shoes

Book news: The Red Shoes

“My memory goes back to the very first films. My ambition goes far ahead of today.” Michael Powell, on the ballet sequence of The Red Shoes Let me just tap this microphone a couple of times. Cough once. Thumbs up. We’re good to go? I have a little announcement to make and it is a wee bit off-topic. You may remember that a few years back I wrote a book about Pandora’s Box (GW Pabst, 1929), in…

[it-may-be-dull-but-im-determined]

Another meta part of this is that original film stock being lost in fires was a thing that happened ALL THE TIME... Because the nitrate film stock itself was hellishly flammable and would literally burst into flames spontaneously. Vast parts of cinema history (including contemporary newsreels and material from the days when female directors and pre-Hayes subjects were the norm) were lost over and over again because the medium of storage was considered impossible for any kind of reliable preservation. Attitudes to preservation shape how we think about entire industries and how they reflect the way we lived at the time, and we've been looking back at film history through a very narrow lens because archiving was never taken seriously.

(tangentially, a trove of 533 nitrate film reels from the 1910s and 1920s were discarded underground in the dry cold of a tiny rural town in the Yukon, a leftover relic of the goldrush era demand for entertainment, and rediscovered in 1978 when a new community centre was being built. The film stock was still considered so flammable it had to be shipped to the Canadian National Archives in a special military plane, and there's a cool experimental documentary about it)

Look if there's one thing, just one thing, that I wish everyone understood about archiving, it's this:

We can always decide later that we don't need something we archived.

Like, if we archive a website that's full of THE WORST STUFF, like it turns out it's borderline illegal bot-made spam art, we can delete it. Gone.

We can also chose not to curate. You can make a list of the 100 Best Fanfic and just quietly not link to or mention the 20,000 RPFs of bigoted youtubers eating each other. No problem!

We can also make things not publicly available. This happens surprisingly often: like, sometimes there'll be a YouTube channel of alt-right bigotry that gets taken down by YouTube, but someone gives a copy to the internet archive, and they don't make it publicly available. Because it might be useful for researchers, and eventually historians, it's kept. But putting it online for everyone to see? That's just be propaganda for their bigotry. So it's hidden, for now. You can ask to see it, but you need a reason.

And we can say all these things, we can chose to delete it later, we can not curate it, we can hide it from public view... But we only have these options BECAUSE we archived it.

If we didn't archive it, we have no options. It is gone. I'm focusing on the negative here, but think about the positive side:

What if it turns out something we thought was junk turns out to be amazing new art?

What if something we thought of as pointless and not worth curating turns out to be influential?

What if something turns out to be of vital historical importance, the key that is used to solve a great mystery, the Rosetta stone for an era?

All of those things are great... If we archived it when we could.

Because this is an asymmetric problem:

If we archived it and it turns out it's not useful, we can delete.

If we didn't archive it and it turns out it is useful, OOPS!

You can't unlose something that's been lost. It's gone. This is a one way trip, it's already fallen off the cliff. Your only hope is that you're wrong about it being lost, and there is actually still a copy somewhere. If it's truly lost, your only option is to build a time machine.

And this has happened! There are things lost, so many of them that we know of, and many more we don't know of. There are BOOKS OF THE BIBLE referenced in the canon that simply do not exist anymore. Like, Paul says to go read his letter to the Laodiceans, and what did that letter say? We don't know. It's gone.

The most celebrated playwright in the English tradition has plays that are just gone. You want to perform or watch Love's Labours Won? TOO FUCKING BAD.

Want to watch Lon Cheyney's London After Midnight, a mystery-horror silent film from 1927? TOO BAD. The MGM vault burnt down in 1965 and the last known copy went up in smoke.

If something still exists, if it still is kept somewhere, there is always an opportunity to decide if it's worthy of being remembered. It can still be recognized for its merits, for its impact, for its importance, or just what it says about the time and culture and people who made it, and what they believed and thought and did. It can still be a useful part of history, even if we decide it's a horrible thing, a bigoted mess, a terrible piece of art. We have the opportunity to do all that.

If it's lost... We are out of options. All we can do is research it from how it affected other things. There's a lot of great books and plays and films and shows that we only know of because other contemporary sources talked about them so much. We're trying to figure out what it was and what it did, from tracing the shadow it cast on the rest of culture.

This is why archivists get anxious whenever people say "this thing is bad and should not be preserved". Because, yeah, maybe they're right. Maybe we'll look back and decide "yeah, that is worthless and we shouldn't waste the hard drive or warehouse space on it".

But if they're wrong, and we listen to them, and don't archive... We don't get a second chance at this. And archivists have been bitten too many times by talk of "we don't need copies, the original studio has the masters!" (it burnt down), or "this isn't worth preserving, it's just some damn silly fad" (the fad turned out to be the first steps of a cultural revolution), or "this media is degenerate/illegal/immoral" (it turns out those saying that were bigots and history doesn't agree with their assessment).

So we archive what we can. We can always decide later if it doesn't need preserving. And being a responsible archivist often means preserving things but not making them publicly available, or being selective in what you archive (I back up a lot of old computer hard drives. Often they have personal photos and emails and banking information! That doesn't get saved).

But it's not really a good idea to be making quality or moral judgements of what you archive. Because maybe you're right, maybe a decade or two later you'll decide this didn't need to be saved. And you'll have the freedom to make that choice. But if you didn't archive it, and decide a decade later you were wrong... It's just gone now. You failed.

Because at the end of the day I'd rather look at an archive and see it includes 10,000 things I think are worthless trash, than look at an archive of on the "best things" and know that there are some things that simply cannot be included. Maybe they were better, but can't be considered as one of the best... Because they're just gone. No one has read them, no one has been able to read them.

We have a long history of losing things. The least we can do going forward is to try and avoid losing more. And leave it up to history to decide if what we saved was worth it.

My dream is for a future where critics can look at stuff made in the present and go "all of this was shit. Useless, badly made, bigoted, horrible. Don't waste your time on it!"

Because that's infinitely better than the future where all they can do is go "we don't know of this was any good... It was probably important? We just don't know. It's gone. And it's never coming back"

[tuttle-did-it]

New documentary dropped: ‘the Life and Deaths of Christopher Lee.’ BFI have a Q+A on it.

[dumpsterfireofsubtext]

Need help deciding what’s next for movie nite

[expatesque]

Rear window was great, you all missed out. Also if you saw me walking along Aldwych in heels and a Prada skirt eating a McDonald's cheeseburger, no you didn't.

Fellow London girlies, just a heads up that the BFI is playing Rear Window on the big screen Oct 2. In case you needed a suggestion on how to kick off spooky season...

[notesonfilm1]

In Conversation with Pamela Hutchinson on The Red Shoes

There is a major retrospective of the films of Powell & Pressburger currently underway in London at the BFI Southbank – the most extensive celebration of their work ever undertaken —  selections of which will tour the country. As part of the celebrations, the BFI has published a short monograph by Pamela Hutchinson on THE RED SHOES — one of their greatest films — under its ‘BFI Film Classics’…

[mrs-stans]

After Playing Trump, Sebastian Stan Got Himself a Swoopy Heartthrob Haircut

Let The Apprentice star’s flowing locks be the blueprint for your next cut.

By Mahalia Chang

Whether you're in the process of growing out your hair or it's just settled into a rut, all guys know the pang of your hair feeling blah. Maybe Sebastian Stan does, too!

Or did, at least. Over the course of his press tour for The Apprentice—a film in which he was unfortunately stuck with Donald Trump's goose nest of a combover—Stan has helpfully modeled a fix for any and all cut boredom: add a little movement and Hollywood via some volume, length and movement in the front.

For Stan, his current cut combines some ultra-long pieces towards the front of his hair, graduating to the back, and some short sides. At the BFI London Film Festival on Tuesday, Stan gave us yet another glimpse at this excellent hair.

Stan has been rocking this particular flavor for some time now. Earlier appearances have seen it pushed back from the face in a more classic interpretation of the style, but for the last few, the 42-year-old has been letting it all hang out front.

The key is in those longer pieces. Stan’s stylist has done a good job creating volume, by working a mousse or a styling cream into the roots to add lift during its being dried (if we had to guess, via a blow dryer as the hair is brushed up and away from the root with a rounded brush). And then, each of those longer pieces are styled rakishly on either side, swapping a clean parting down the centre for something a little more devil-may-care. The combination of the volume at the roots and the styling over it over the part (AKA not on the natural side of the part that it's growing from) means that the way it falls over his face is fun and not too try-hard.

It's a little ’50s movie star, and a little ’90s Brad Pitt at the height of his hair powers. It has movement and height, but it doesn’t feel “done,” and it looks even better when you run your hands through it, and reset everything.

As it goes, this is a haircut that works remarkably well for anyone in the process of growing out their hair. While you let that front and back grow, keep the sides neatly trimmed and tucked behind your ears, until you’re ready for it to be cut into its final form.

Or, just leave it as is. As they say, if it works for Sebastian Stan…

[jgroffdaily]

‘A Nice Indian Boy’ will be released theatrically early next year, and then will be available on streaming (no further details available yet)

Jonathan Groff singing Bollywood tunes is the centerpiece of “A Nice Indian Boy,” a groundbreaking gay rom-com that’s heating up the BFI London Film Festival.

Director Roshan Sethi and stars Groff (“Mindhunter,” “Glee,” “Doctor Who”) and Karan Soni (the “Deadpool” franchise) are challenging Hollywood norms with their cross-cultural love story, which debuted at SXSW. It aims to bring a fresh perspective to both LGBTQ+ and South Asian representation on screen.

The genesis of the project traces back to 2019, when Levantine Films optioned Madhuri Shekar’s play of the same name and Eric Randall adapted it as a screenplay. Sethi came aboard in 2021 after the producers saw his previous film “7 Days.” He then approached his real-life partner Soni to co-star. Groff signed on after watching “7 Days.”

“I do think what’s interesting about the current era of ‘diversity films’ is that they tend to be very homogeneous. They’re all Asian or they’re all Indian, or they’re all black or they’re all white, in the exact opposite case, and the reality of our world is that we’re all mixed up with each other in tangled, messy ways. And this movie very much reflects that, because you have a meeting of cultures,” Sethi says.

For Groff, who plays a white character adopted by Indian parents, the role required immersing himself in a culture he was largely unfamiliar with. “I had never seen a Bollywood movie. I didn’t know anything about this culture in general,” Groff says. His preparation included watching the Bollywood classic “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” (DDLJ) to nail a pivotal musical moment in the film.

This scene, featuring Groff’s character singing the evergreen “Tujhe Dekha To Ye Jana Sanam” from “DDLJ,” is a highlight of the film. “I didn’t know that he was going to do, like, a falsetto, la, la, la, la, la – that trilling thing,” Sethi says. “Everyone was turned on,” Soni adds.

Despite the cultural specificity, Groff found the family dynamics surprisingly relatable. “I, immediately from the first take of the first scene, couldn’t believe how familiar it all felt,” he says. “Even though there was a stark difference in culture, it was so heartwarming to see that families are families, no matter what culture you’re in.”

The production faced significant challenges, primarily due to a compressed timeline. Sethi reveals they had just four weeks of pre-production and a 21-day shoot with six-day weeks. “We were just like this tiny indie movie that was crammed in between these other much larger, broader circumstances,” he says, referring to Soni’s commitment to “Deadpool” and the then-looming SAG-AFTRA strike.

Financing the film also proved difficult. “We barely got this movie made. We barely found the money. We struggled for years,” Sethi says. He notes that Groff’s involvement was crucial in securing funding. “None of the Indian actors are deemed meaningful enough to obtain financing,” Sethi explains, calling Hollywood “one of the most racist industries in America.”

For Sethi, who still practices medicine, the film represents a personal milestone. “I was closeted six years ago, and now I got to make this movie, which is highly personal,” he says. “I could never have imagined when I was like, walking around the hospital as a straight doctor, watching [HBO’s] ‘Looking,’ that I was going to like be out, much less like be making this movie.”

“A Nice Indian Boy” is set for a theatrical release in the first quarter of next year, with streaming plans to follow. The filmmakers are optimistic about its commercial prospects, citing positive responses from diverse test audiences. “When we were testing the movie among audiences, the highest scoring audience was always white women,” Sethi notes.

The team hopes the film will resonate beyond niche audiences. “Part of the other issue with the so-called diverse film and representation movements is that they’ve made those movies feel like they are for niche audiences,” Sethi says. “The truth is diversity should be an opening up of storytelling where you’re finding more and more interesting and more new stories to tell people, but just vitalize art. They don’t splinter it, they don’t make it more niche. They vitalize it.”

As they prepare for the film’s wider release, the cast is moving on to new projects. Soni is set to star in the thriller “Fade to Black,” while Sethi is working on a new romantic comedy script where he’s “going back to straight people.” Groff, fresh off his Tony win for “Merrily We Roll Along” on Broadway, is returning to the Great White Way with “Just In Time,” a new musical about the life and times of singer Bobby Darin.

[mariocki]

The BFI are still teasing this set, and have finally released a clip of the first Ghost Story for Christmas, 1968's Whistle and I'll Come to You. Of all the footage released so far, it's this oldest of the plays that looks to be the most dramatically improved in quality - it could honestly have been shot yesterday - and with significant cleanup of the sound too.

I'm doing everything in my power not to buy this set, because it's stupid when I have the dvds, but the BFI have a done an astonishing job on cleaning up the Ghost Stories for Christmas, so if you've ever been tempted by them this is the set to invest in

[scotianostra]

Happy Birthday Bill Forsyth the Scottish film director and screenwriter.

Born in Glasgow July 29th 1946 and educated at Knightswood School. On leaving aged 17, he answered an advertisement for a “Lad required for film company” and spent the next eight years helping make short documentary films.

Leaving documentary production in 1977, Forsyth wrote the scripts for Gregory’s Girl and That Sinking Feeling in the hope of breaking into feature films.

Obtaining finance, however, proved frustrating and problematic. The BFI Production Board rejected Gregory’s Girl three times. Forsyth later said, “I remember one torment of a meeting when I tried to explain that Gregory’s Girl was really a structuralist comedy… I suspect my script was too conventional although nobody actually told me as much.”.

That Sinking Feeling was eventually made in 1979 with amateur actors from the Glasgow Youth Theatre, including John Gordon Sinclair (who later took the lead in Gregory’s Girl , its tiny £5,000 budget was raised from a variety of sources.

Forsyth’s distinctive voice as writer-director is already apparent in this tale of a robbery of stainless steel sinks by a gang of unemployed Glasgow teenagers - intensely humanistic and humorous yet with an underlying seriousness of purpose. This ability to create a self-contained yet believable world with a keen sense of the absurd and bizarre in the everyday is perhaps only rivalled by the work of British television writer Alan Plater. The film opened to great popular and critical success at the Edinburgh and London Film Festivals but was unable to secure more widespread distribution.

Gregory’s Girl was Forsyth’s breakthrough film. This acutely observed story of adolescence and first love set in a Scottish new town was rapturously received by both critics and public alike. Forsyth’s reputation seemed to be secured by the success of his next venture, Local Hero, a first collaboration with producer David Puttnam.

In 1999 he made Gregory’s Two Girls as a sequel to Gregory’s Girl, with John Gordon Sinclair playing the same character, but it received mixed reviews.

Gregory's Girl, to me, is still a very funny film, but it feels dated, that's not to say that it hasn't stood the test of time with some folk, indeed The Glasgow Film Theatre (GFT) showed a 4k version of the 1980 cult classic last August 1which was followed by a Q&A session with some of the cast including Gordon Sinclair(Gregory), Clare Grogan.

In 2022 the popular Scottish actor Peter Capaldi spoke of how Bill Forsyth saved him from living off pakora and lager after featuring him in Local Hero. The Doctor Who and The Thick Of It star praised the Scots film director in an acceptance speech after receiving a Bafta Scotland Award for Outstanding Contribution to Film & Television.

I love Capaldi's affection for our country, speaking to the audience while holding his Bafta, Capaldi said the award was “for getting lucky, and for being lucky enough to be born in Scotland”.

He said: “Forty years ago I was just up here (in Glasgow) as an art student, living off pakora and lager for breakfast.

“Bill Forsyth scooped me up and put me in Local Hero.

“It was an act of kindness and confidence that baffled me and much of the industry to this day, but I wouldn’t be here without him and nor would a lot of others.”

Capaldi landed this breakthrough film role aged 24 playing Danny Oldsen, a naive young oil industry executive, in the film.

A number of actors, including Dee Hepburn, will be a part of a celebration of the films of Bill Forsyth at the Outwith Festival of music and arts which takes place in Dunfermline from September 3-8. It will also screen That Sinking Feeling and Local Hero at the city’s Carnegie Theatre.

[silentlondon]

Happy dance

“Just a little note” is so often code for “here comes some shameless self-promotion”. So, here goes. Just a little note to say that today is publication day for my second BFI Film Classic. As I posted earlier in the year it is on The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948), a film with several connections to silent cinema and to the Roaring Twenties – but strictly speaking,…

[aristobun]

fuck off 😂