Since I live at at five-minute walk from the Southbank, I could spend seven months in the cultural heart of London. In this second semester, unfortunately, I couldn't go to many events, because of essays, readings and tests which took all my time.
However, I still have all my tickets from the events I attended between September and January. Here's a brief summary of them together with films' and readings' suggestions.
What's a MacGuffin? This was the very first event I
attended. Since one of my biggest interest is screenwriting, I wanted
to learn more about writing thriller films. The lecture consisted in a nice pastiche of
Hitchcock's clips to analyse how the suspense is built through film form
and characters. That suspense that Hitch defined as an exquisite torture
for the audience. The MacGuffin object is essentially this: a
plot device on which to hang the tension in a film, but that in itself
could be anything and nothing. Some of the most famous ones in
Hitchcock's filmography are: the lighter in Strangers on a Train, the ring and the newspaper in Shadows of a Doubt, the government secrets in North by Northwest, the first Mrs. De Winter in Rebecca, the uranium in Notorius, the suspected murder in Rear Window, the necklace in Vertigo, the $40.000 cash in an envelope and Arbogast's phone booth call in Psycho, the colour red in Marnie, the reason the birds attack in The Birds. As guest star in the last part of the meeting we had the pleasure to meet David Freeman Hitchcock's last screenwriter,who worked with him on Family Plot (1976), he also wrote a book about this collaboration called: The last days of Alfred Hitchcock.
Creative Collaborations: Edith Head and Alfred Hitchcock, see my old post about it here:
http://artbookscinema.blogspot.it/2013/02/characters-come-first.html
Caesar Must Die:
It's always good to feel proud of your own country, this was my feeling when I saw that both Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's film (also winner of the Golden Bear at the Berlin International Film Festival in 2012) and Marco Bellocchio's
The Sleeping Beauty (La Bella Addormentata) were being presented at the London Film Festival. The film is a splendid homage to Shakespeare, to the richness of the Italian language, and, above all, to humanity.
The Art of Frankenweenie:Tim Burton's Frankenweenie opened the London Film Festival last year, and the director left the stop - motion characters with all their clothes and settings used on the film plus pictures taken during the creation of them to the BFI for one-month free exhibition. It was fantastic, and the young people working there were all Disney Studios' employers who worked on the film and were ready to explain every single step of the creation of a stop-motion feature-length film. The work behind it is unbelievable, to all those who say Tim Burton is "only" a mainstream director etc., please believe me, he is an artist, with his visionary point of view on the world, and he takes care of every moment of his films until everything meets his taste. Read Burton on Burton if you still have doubts.
Im Kwon-Taek in Conversation - Run Far, Fly High:The South-Korean director is the winner of the Honorary Golden Berlin Bear (2005) and nominated twice for the Golden Bear with Gilsoddeum (1986), and The Taebaek Mountains (1995) at the Berlin International Film Festival. Moreover, he won as Best Director at Cannes Film Festival with Chihwaseon (2002). He is a key figure to learn about the meaning of working in the film industry during a regime in which most of the topics were taboo. His films reflect on Korean society, on Buddhism, culture, Japanese colonial power. One of the reasons of his success is that he improved throughout his career by always trying something new. Extremely interesting to learn about the battle against censorship from a voice that saw and portrayed history in the moving pictures for 50 years. Suggested viewings: Mandala (1981), The Surrogate Woman (1986), Come, Come, Come Upward (1989), General's Son (1990), and Seopyeonje (1993).Here's the conversation: http://www.bfi.org.uk/live/video/1013
http://www.rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/brian_helgeland/biography.php
If you're interested in the topic you can watch some other screenwriting's lectures here: http://www.bfi.org.uk/live/video/872
Horror Europa with Mark Gatiss: preview for BFI Members of this BBC 4 programme with Mark Gatiss (author of the series A History of Horror, 2010):https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFJXeVtHrkE
The screening consisted of his trip around Europe to research the roots of the horror genre in the 20th century: from the castle of Nosferatu and the German Expressionism, to the Italian giallo followed by the Belgian lesbian vampires and the ghosts of the Spanish Civil War to the 70s Italian horrors with De Palma, Dario Argento and Emilio Bava. Full of content and very rich with directors' interviews done for the occasion, visits on film's locations, and a proper narrative behind it exploring less-known films, totally worth watching. To conclude the meeting had a Q&A with Gatiss.
Screen Epiphanies: John Landis introduces 2001: A Space Odissey.The director of The Blues Brothers and Animal House, films which shaped my childhood and that I rewatch whenever I can plus one my favorite director's masterpieces. Each month the BFI presents the Screen Epiphanies in which a big film director, producer, actor, etc. introduces the film that made them love cinema, and took them into that world. Here is the director's introduction:
http://www.bfi.org.uk/live/video/1016
Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures.I have always wanted to see this documentary, and I had a very special chance. Introducing it and sitting among us there was nonetheless than Jan Harlan, Kubrick's friend and producer throughout his career. Every time I meet someone who played such a big role in the films I love the most, I feel very honoured, because it motivates me to keep on loving my subject, and hoping for the future. The documentary presents a very personal and well-rounded portrait of Stanley Kubrick, it was directed by Harlan, after the director's death (1999) and released in 2001. It narrates and celebrates his career, his attitude during the films' creation, and his actors talking about him along with his wife, Christiane Kubrick, his daugther, Vivian Kubrick and Jan Harlan (it was such a weird feeling to watch him on the screen and then turn my head and see him sitting there.) Here is the link to the complete documentary: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR-loS9MHww
The Shining: nothing more to add, I love Kubrick, I love Jack Nicholson, and I love love love The Shining, I went to see the director's cut which was released by the BFI for the first time. Just amazing. And, actually, a few days ago, thanks to a classmate's presentation on Swedish cinema, I found out that the sequence of Jack breaking the door with an axe is inspired by a silent horror film: The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjostrom, 1921). You can find it on Youtube, I watched it and it's awesome, I highly recommend it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hg7hAwUGQmo
Amour : certainly not a film for everyone, you have to enter the cinema being aware that you are about to watch something psychologically very strong and disturbing. I started crying just at the beginning, because I couldn't think of a better title to express what we see rather than AMOUR. Watch it if you feel ready, but bare in mind that it is not an easy experience, but one that is definitely worth the effort. Absolutely deserved Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival and the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar plus other four Oscar nominations. Thanks Michael Haneke.
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