Tag Archives: bfi
Jodie Foster on why The Silence of The Lambs is a perfect film
I recently wrote about why the 1990s was such an amazing time to be a young woman. Jodie Foster confirmed the sense of a breakthrough at a screening of The Silence of The Lambs on Friday night at the BFI … Continue reading
Johnny Guitar? You probably think this film is about you.
This is the text of an introduction I gave at a re-release screening of Johnny Guitar at the British Film Institute on May 6th 2016 I saw Johnny Guitar for first time here at the BFI to whom I”ll always … Continue reading
The search for TV’s first interracial kiss and why it matters
This is the story behind the BFI’s news today that it may have found the earliest TV interracial kiss. Though in response there are already suggestions that it may not be the first. A few months ago the team behind It … Continue reading
A brief encounter with Richard Attenborough & his best friend Bryan Forbes
When the British Film Institute ran a Richard Attenborough retrospective back in the early 2000s, Sir Richard came to introduce every screening. The gesture seemed to capture his enthusiasm, modesty, kindness and warmth for cinema and audiences. At the screening … Continue reading
Alan Bennett: On the art of the monologue & being teenage “jailbait”
To mark Alan Bennett’s 80th birthday, this is an updated post based on an In Conversation with the playwright, diarist and screenwriter  at the British Film Institute in March last year. It was focussed on his skills with the monologue, as part … Continue reading
How RBS bankers wiped The Life of Brian rushes: Stories from Missing Believed Wiped
TV archiving is, it turns out, a lot like classic archaeology. “What archaeologists want to find most is the midden – [the dump] full of waste, and ephemera which tell you the most about a society.” Chris Perry ofKaleidoscope … Continue reading
From Ealing to Four Lions: How to fund a great British film.
BAFTA Nominations were out today. When I remarked on Twitter yesterday that the Golden Globe winning, now much BAFTA nominated, Oscar hopeful The King’s Speech had been funded via the scrapped UK Film Council I was flagging up the difficulty … Continue reading