DOCSLIB.ORG

Ben Wheatley

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Ben Wheatley BEN WHEATLEY It takes a mix of lunacy and integrity to make films as uncompromising as Down Terrace (2008), Kill List (2011), Sightseers (2012) and A Field in England (2013). While there might be a prevailing tone of dark humour and horror to Ben Wheatley’s films, really his defining trait is independence. He starts projects with his own money, so that control cannot be taken away from him further down the line. The Essex-born director was a comic fan and graphic artist in his youth. Coming through sketch shows and comedy series in the Noughties, Wheatley’s cinematic visions are clearly drawn, his subversion of genre and tired conventions utterly original. Roaring successes in his own inimitable style now mean big suitors like HBO seek his magic touch. More greatness is expected, but only after his latest project, an adaptation of J.G. Ballard’s High Rise, brings more dark intelligence to our screens. Interview Joshua Bullock Artwork Anna Galkina 46 47 Joshua Bullock : Ben, you started out in subversive TV comedy: The Wrong BW: Rob and I had made a short film ten years earlier called ‘Rob Loves Door, Ideal and Time Trumpet. Why do you think you’ve ended up giving Kerry’. That was a really important film for us because it was based around so many comic actors dramatic roles in your films? something that had happened to Rob, so we’d made it with the people who were involved in the story: Rob kind of played himself, Kerry kind Ben Wheatley: I think there’s something brilliant about comedians who of played herself and his dad kind of played himself. We had a barebones act straight because they already know how to do the hard thing, which script which was then improvised on and I shot it in quite a loosey-goosey, is making people laugh. It’s always the flip side of the clown, as the cliché documentary style. Amy Jump [now Wheatley’s wife] came in to edit it, goes. A lot of comedy is based around sadness, so they usually have quite and she introduced a really flinty, hard editing style to it that we hadn’t a big reservoir of it for more dramatic roles. done before. I had done a bit of hard-cut, jump-cut stuff I’d got from New Wave film. She had a different approach. She didn’t give a fuck about film JB: Yo u r fi r s t fi l m , Down Terrace, had elements of comedy on the surface history – she’s a very experienced and very talented artist and just saw of a deeper dramatic tension. The dialogue seems natural and colloquial it with a completely different and fresh eye. That editing style was what but it doesn’t digress from the story as some improvisational scripts can. made that film and Down Terrace possible. The cut style in the film is not as hard as the short because I’d come off of doing a lot of TV – that had BW: Rob and I made a lot improv-y stuff over the ten years before Down calmed it down. I’m an editor and I love editing, I love seeing it, I don’t Te r ra c e, so that went into the film. Also, we were working quickly and the necessarily believe in invisible editing as the best editing. I want to see only way we could do it was treat it like documentary and harvest enough the chops in it and with this I wanted to see the emotion changing from material that would be usable. One of the big problems with low budget moment to moment. is you’re forcing people to do the script, which might not be brilliant, and you’ve got nowhere to hide from it. It usually ends up looking like JB: You’ve joked in the past that two major influences when you were the actors are bad and they’re usually not. It’s more likely the script is a making films were The Sopranos box set and Hollywood Blocking, an bit ropey and the actors literally can’t say it. We knew the meaning and instructional DVD about camera positioning and setups. tone of it was right but sometimes the order of the words wasn’t. It’s very difficult to script that close, stuttery delivery so we thought we’d just BW: I’d watched Hollywood Blocking before and thought I knew it all. When let them do it and put it in their own words: not making stuff up, just you’re shooting TV and there’s such a turnover of shots to get through remembering in a more relaxed way. everyday it grinds you down – you run out of ideas for coverage. So I used it for the comedy series Ideal (2011) I shot with Johnny Vegas. It basically JB: How did you meet Rob Hill who plays the film’s main character, and ended up as a playbook like you’d get for American football. whose real dad plays his fictional father in the film? JB: One of the issues some people claim to have with conceptual art is BW: When I met Rob, I was in my first year at university and he was that there doesn’t seem to be a rebellion from craft – no one has spent doing his A-levels. He’d started making a film called Project Assassin with years learning drawing or printmaking to then subvert it. Has all the more Andy and Mike Hurst. It took them four or five years to do it. I helped formulaic TV and advertising work you’ve done as a director given you out, did the storyboards and wrote bits of script for it but not very much. rules to break? That was an eye opener: they went to Cannes on their own, found a guy in a bar and got a German distributor for it. That showed me all you needed BW: Maybe, but it’s almost that the filmmaking tools and the language of was confidence, gumption and hard work and you could actually do it. it are all there to find. Film is a weird art because it got invented in the first You don’t need to go to film school. You don’t need anyone’s permission. twenty years of its life and they uninvented it half way through because sound completely fucked everything up. Early cinema is as wild as anything JB: You can’t hide behind the fact that it is expensive to make a debut anyone is doing now. We’re not at the cutting edge of cinematic craft – we’re film any longer. trying to catch up with what’s already been invented. To do anything that looks like it’s got any intention behind it should be applauded, so when I BW: Not at all. I’m doing lots of tests at the moment on iPhones. The see films that have any kind of authorship I think it’s great. That analogy iPhone is a beautiful thing. The new iPhone 6 shoots really good pictures. of art and its current stage of abstraction doesn’t really hold. Film isn’t I just bought the Zumi 2. It’s a weird little Japanese camera and it comes like that because it’s a craft. You’re not going to get an abstract cupboard in bubble-gum pink and shoots like an Instagram video camera. because if one of the drawers didn’t open you’d be fucked. Film has that issue because there’s a lot of ways you can push the form around, have all JB: How much would that set you back? sorts of stories. That’s where I live. My films aren’t necessarily the easiest to understand for mainstream audiences but they do still adhere to pretty BW: 120 quid. Everyone seems to think now they’ve got DSLRs like strict storytelling processes. the Canon 5D, everything’s sorted. But DSLRs just mean that everything looks the fucking same. The iPhone is probably as powerful as, or is almost JB: All your films reconcile themselves in some form of conclusion. as good as, some of the cameras I was using in the Nineties. We were lucky to get a Red to shoot Down Terrace – it had just come out and was BW: They’re not Stan Brakhage. When I hear criticism of my films a bit of an unknown. Filmmakers can fall into an image arms race. Their that they’re hard to understand, I think, ‘These people haven’t seen any demands get bigger and bigger, but what that eventually means is they Tarkovsky!’ If A Field in England is the hardest thing to unpack for them don’t make a film. They never do it because they’re too worried about then they really have lived quite a sheltered cinematic life. People have a what it’s going to look like. very low tolerance of stuff even slightly outside of what they want and a very high opinion of their own needs. It’s fine – a lot of this criticism would JB: How did Down Terrace come about? once have been in the pub but now it’s right up in your face. To p : A Field In England © Drafthouse Films; bottom: Kill List © IFC Films 48 49 JB: When you were growing up in Essex in the Seventies and Eighties, far away from the metropolis, Down Terrace, it never would have happened and we’ve always had a slightly kamikaze approach to what were your cultural references and creative beginnings? stuff.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Festival Schedule
    T H E n OR T HWEST FILM CE n TER / p ORTL a n D a R T M US E U M p RESE n TS 3 3 R D p ortl a n D I n ter n a tio n a L film festi v a L S p O n SORED BY: THE OREGO n I a n / R E G a L C I n EM a S F E BR U a R Y 1 1 – 2 7 , 2 0 1 0 WELCOME Welcome to the Northwest Film Center’s 33rd annual showcase of new world cinema. Like our Northwest Film & Video Festival, which celebrates the unique visions of artists in our community, PIFF seeks to engage, educate, entertain and challenge. We invite you to explore and celebrate not only the art of film, but also the world around you. It is said that film is a universal language—able to transcend geographic, political and cultural boundaries in a singular fashion. In the spirit of Robert Louis Stevenson’s famous observation, “There are no foreign lands. It is the traveler who is foreign,” this year’s films allow us to discover what unites rather than what divides. The Festival also unites our community, bringing together culturally diverse audiences, a remarkable cross-section of cinematic voices, public and private funders of the arts, corporate sponsors and global film industry members. This fabulous ecology makes the event possible, and we wish our credits at the back of the program could better convey our deep appreci- ation of all who help make the Festival happen.
    [Show full text]
  • Emma Scott Make-Up & Hair Designer
    Lux Artists Ltd. 12 Stephen Mews London W1T 1AH +44 (0)20 7637 9064 www.luxartists.net EMMA SCOTT MAKE-UP & HAIR DESIGNER FILM/TELEVISION DIRECTOR PRODUCER POSSUM Matthew Holness The Fyzz Cast: Sean Harris THE SNOWMAN Tomas Alfredson Working Title Cast: Michael Fassbender, Rebecca Ferguson, Charlotte Gainsbourg Universal Pictures FREE FIRE Ben Wheatley Rook Films Cast: Sam Riley, Cillian Murphy, Brie Larson, Noah Taylor, Armie Hammer Studio Canal Official Selection, Toronto Film Festival (2016) Official Selection, London Film Festival (2016) Nominated, Best Director, BIFA (2016) PRIDE, PREJUDICE & ZOMBIES Burr Steers Cross Creek Pictures Cast: Sam Riley, Matt Smith, Lena Headey, Jack Huston, Douglas Booth BABYLON (Pilot) Danny Boyle Nightjack Cast: Brit Marling, James Nesbitt Channel 4 THE GOOB Guy Myhill BBC Films Cast: Sean Harris, Hannah Spearritt, Liam Walpole Winner, Golden Hitchcock Award, Dinard British Film Festival (2014) ’71 Yann Demange Warp Films Cast: Sean Harris, Jack O’Connell, Paul Anderson, Sam Reid Nominated, Outstanding British Film, BAFTA Awards (2015) Official Selection, London Film Festival (2014) Official Selection, Berlin Film Festival (2014) Official Selection, Toronto Film Festival (2014) MUPPETS: MOST WANTED James Bobin Walt Disney Pictures Cast: Ricky Gervais, Tina Fey, Ty Burrell SOUTHCLIFFE (Mini-series) Sean Durkin Warp Films Cast: Sean Harris, Rory Kinnear, Shirley Henderson, Eddie Marsan, Joe Dempsie Nominated, Best Mini-Series, BAFTA TV Awards (2014) UTOPIA (Season 1) Marc Munden Kudos Film & TV Cast:
    [Show full text]
  • Wfs Filmnotes Template
    30 April 2013 www.winchesterfilmsociety.co.uk … why not visit our website to join in the discussion after each screening? Sightseers UK 2012 Every season when the committee Ben Wheatley is the outstanding young whittle down a long, long list to just British film-maker who got himself Directed by 16 films, there are one or two that talked about with his smart debut Down Ben Wheatley really intrigue us and we can’t wait to Terrace; then he scared the daylights out Director of Photography see. Sightseers is that film for 12/13! of everyone, as well as amusing and Laurie Rose baffling them, with his inspired and There is no direct French translation for ambiguous chiller Kill List. His talent Original Music and signature are vividly present in every Jim Williams the word ‘sightseers’, so Ben Wheatley’s new film is titled Touristes in Cannes, frame of this new movie, Sightseers, a Screenplay where it has screened as part of grisly and Ortonesque black comedy Alice Lowe Directors’ Fortnight. In a way, that’s about a lonely couple played by co- Steve Oram perfectly fitting: this flesh-creepingly writers Steve Oram and Alice Lowe. funny comedy turns into something that, Again, Wheatley is adept at summoning Cast rather worryingly, you can’t imagine an eerie atmosphere of Wicker Man Alice Lowe happening in any other country but disquiet; the glorious natural Tina England. Lowe and Oram’s script surroundings are endowed with a golden Steve Oram balances nimbly on the thread of razor sunlit glow and the trips to quaint Chris wire between horror and farce: the film venues of local interest are well Eileen Davies is frequently laugh-out-loud funny but observed: particularly Tina's heartbroken Carol the couple’s crimes are never trivialised, solo excursion to the Pencil Museum.
    [Show full text]
  • POST-BRITISH CRIME FILMS and the ETHICS of RETRIBUTIVE VIOLENCE Mark Schmitt (TU Dortmund University)
    CINEMA 11 152 “THEY’RE BAD PEOPLE – THEY SHOULD SUFFER”: POST-BRITISH CRIME FILMS AND THE ETHICS OF RETRIBUTIVE VIOLENCE Mark Schmitt (TU Dortmund University) In recent years, British popular genre cinema has displayed a tendency to allegorise the ethical ques- tions resulting from the nation’s social and political challenges of the 21st century.1 Whether it is the Blair government’s decision to join the US in the Iraq war in 2003 and the ensuing disillusionment with democracy and the futility of public protest, the austerity measures and subsequently increasing social divisions in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008, the ongoing process of Scottish and Welsh devolution that challenges the very notion of a United Kingdom, Britain finds itself in a stage that Michael Gardiner has described as “post-British.”2 On the level of the nation-state, and especially with regard to Scottish and Welsh devolution, the post-British process can be identified as the “demo- cratic restructuring of each nation within union and each nation still affected by Anglophone imperial- ism”3, while the social structure of Britain is still marked by the internal fault lines of class divisions of class. The notion of “post-Britain” has been addressed in British film studies. William Brown has sug- gested that Britain’s cinematic output in the 21st century offers a “paradoxically post-British” perspec- tive which is reflected in subject matter, ideological points of view and modes of production.4 As Brown argues, such post-British perspectives can particularly be found in popular genre films such as 28 Days Later (2002) and V for Vendetta (2006).5 In the following, I will argue that this post-British sensibility in contemporary national genre cinema is aligned with urgent ethical questions regarding the nation state on both the British level as well as within a larger European context.
    [Show full text]
  • 1. Long Time Dead
    1. LONG TIME DEAD In 2002, the filmmaker Richard Stanley sounded the death knell of ‘the great British horror movie’. His ‘obituary’, which appeared in Steve Chibnall and Julian Petley’s edited volume British Horror Cinema, lamented the general absence of any real directorial talent at the turn of the millennium, noting that the horror film directors ‘who really knew what they were doing escaped to Hollywood a long time ago’ (Stanley 2002: 194). Stanley cited the direct-to- video occult horror The 13th Sign (Jonty Acton and Adam Mason, 2000) as offering a glimmer of hope, but concluded that it was ‘still a long way below the minimum standard of even the most vilified 1980s product’ (2002: 193). Stanley’s pessimism was not unfounded (even if his assessment of The 13th Sign was perhaps a bit unfair). Hammer Films – the once-prolific film studio responsible for the first full-colour horror film, The Curse of Frankenstein (Terence Fisher), in 1957, and a host of other classic British horrors over the next two decades – buckled under market pressure and ceased making feature films in 1979. The 1980s, therefore, saw the production of only a handful of British horror films, which, at any rate, were mostly thought of as American productions that had peripheral British involvement, such as Stanley Kubrick’s blockbuster The Shining (1980) and Clive Barker’s franchise- initiating Hellraiser (1987). Others from the decade were artsy one-offs, such as the Gothic fairy tale The Company of Wolves (Neil Jordan, 1984), or (as was most often the case) amateurish flops, such as the cheap and clumsy monster movie Rawhead Rex (George Pavlou, 1986).
    [Show full text]
  • Film Reviews
    Page 78 FILM REVIEWS Kill List (Dir. Ben Wheatley) UK 2011 Optimum Releasing Note: This review contains extensive spoilers Kill List is the best British horror film since The Descent (Dir. Neil Marshall, 2005). Mind you, you wouldn’t know that from the opening half­hour or so. Although it opens with an eerie scratching noise and the sight of a cryptic rune that can’t help but evoke the unnerving stick figure from The Blair Witch Project (Dir. Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sánchez, 1999), we’re then plunged straight into a series of compellingly naturalistic scenes of domestic discord which, as several other reviews have rightly pointed out, evoke nothing so much as the films of Mike Leigh. (The fact that much of the film’s dialogue is supplied by the cast also adds to this feeling.) But what Leigh’s work doesn’t have is the sense of claustrophobic dread that simmers in the background throughout Wheatley’s film (his second, after 2009’s Down Terrace ). Nor have any of them – to date at least – had an ending as devastating and intriguing as this. Yet the preliminary scenes in Kill List are in no sense meant to misdirect, or wrong­foot the audience: rather, they’re absolutely pivotal to the narrative as a whole, even if many of the questions it raises remain tantalisingly unresolved. Jay (Neil Maskell) and his wife Shel (MyAnna Buring) live in a spacious, well­appointed suburban home (complete with jacuzzi) and have a sweet little boy, but theirs is clearly a marriage on the rocks, and even the most seemingly innocuous exchange between them is charged with hostility and mutual misunderstanding.
    [Show full text]
  • Download the PDF (7Mb)
    belfast film festival 1st-9th APRIL 2020 :o wat*esd ev! Awat* adi _ ck m8hed 20 selly raby kane 1 OUR FUNDERS INTRODUCTION For more than 20 years we have celebrated the creativity, politics and joy film brings. We have witnessed with pride the growth of the indigenous filmmaking sector; hosted exciting ‘movie star’ guests; showcased brilliant international filmmaking talent; and shared thousands of diverse stories and cultures with you, our audience. Over the coming decade we will do it all again, re-energised and excited by the wealth of talent and love of film that surrounds us. Michele Devlin. Festival Director From Belfast to the World When I grew up in Belfast, there was no film festival. I was passionate about movies, and visually hungry, but there was no annual event to feed my hunger. I went searching elsewhere, and have ended up working with some of the greatest ACCOMMODATION OFFICIAL MEDIA people in cinema – Tilda Swinton, Jane Fonda, Sean Connery, etc. – but I think back to the 70s and 80s and imagine what more we could have achieved as movie PARTNER PARTNERS lovers and makers if we’d had a film festival. Thankfully we’ve seen brilliant changes in our society since then. Peace has returned, new populations have moved to our city, and we now have world class film studios and programme makers. The quality of our lives has improved and our horizons have opened. Film is the great horizon-opener. Since its birth 20 years ago, the Belfast Film VENUE Festival has had a centrifugal imagination.
    [Show full text]
  • A Field in England
    INSIGHT REPORT A Field In England bfi.org.uk 1 Contents Introduction 3 Executive Summary 4 Section One: Overview 5 Section Two: Planning and Execution 6 Section Three: Results 9 Section Four: Conclusions 14 2 INTRODUCTION The following is the report on the DAY AND DATERELEASEOFA Field In England. It uses a wide range of data to measure performance on all platforms, and tries to address the key questions about the significance of the release. A Field In England was released on 5 July 2013 The conclusions are based on an objective view on cinema screens, DVD, VOD and free terrestrial of the data, interviews both before and after broadcast on Film4. the film’s release, and on experience of the UK distribution and exhibition market. The BFI Distribution Fund supported the release of the project with £56,701, which contributed The report evaluates the performance of an to a P&A spend of £112,000. The total production individual film but it also tries to explain the budget was £316,879. context of the release and to suggest lessons for other films trying similar strategies. This report uses a number of measures to assess the success of the release: s "OXOFFICEREPORTSDAILYFOROPENING weekend, weekly thereafter) s /PENINGWEEKENDEXITPOLLSFROM&IRST-OVIES )NTERNATIONALFOR0ICTUREHOUSECINEMA s $6$"LU 2AYSALES/PENINGWEEKEND s 4ELEVISIONRATINGS s /NLINEMONITORING"RILLIANT.OISEFOR Picturehouse Cinemas) 3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY sA Field In EnglandISANEXPERIMENTAL GENRE s4HEPRIMARYAUDIENCEWAS!"#n YEARS busting film set in the English Civil War OLD ANDFREQUENTCINEMAGOERSINTHE ANDDIRECTEDBY"EN7HEATLEYDown Terrace, bracket, who might have already been aware Kill List, Sightseers). of Wheatley’s work.
    [Show full text]
  • Blood Moon Directed by Dori Baltzo
    www.cine-city.co.uk ADVENTURES IN WORLD CINEMA The Brighton Film Festival 11-27 NOV 2016 DUKE OF YORK’S WELCOME OPENING NIGHT FRI 11 NOV / 6:30PM / 11:15PM TH TO THE 14 DIR: BEN WHEATLEY. WITH: SHARLTO COPLEY, ARMIE HAMMER, BRIE LARSON, EDITION OF CILLIAN MURPHY, JACK REYNOR, SAM RILEY, NOAH TAYLOR. CINECITY UK 2016. 90 MINS. Ben Wheatley (Sightseers, A Field in www.cine-city.co.uk England) follows hot-on-the-heels of his last feature High-Rise with this all guns blazing action thriller, shot CINECITY presents the very best in world on location in a warehouse outside cinema with a global mix of premieres Brighton. and previews, treasures from the archive, Set in America in 1978, Justine (Brie artists’ and live cinema, a showcase of Larson) has arranged a deal on behalf films made in this city and a programme of two Irishmen (Cillian Murphy, of talks and education events. The festival ADVENTURES IN Michael Smiley) to buy a stash of guns from gangsters Vernon (Sharlto Copley) gives you first sight of highly anticipated and Ord (Armie Hammer) but then titles ahead of release and highlights there’s a misunderstanding and shots many others brought to Brighton from WORLD CINEMA FREE are fired… The standout cast have great fun with this shoot-em-up and around the world for one-off screenings. The Brighton Film Festival 11-27 NOV 2016 the playful script’s wry dialogue as the manic standoff escalates to a bloody FIRE game of survival. The main festival cinemas are the Duke of is probably the most international line-up to York’s Picturehouse and Duke’s at Komedia date and presents a host of award-winning To help you see but screenings and events take place right films.
    [Show full text]
  • International & Festivals
    COMPANY CV – INTERNATIONAL & FESTIVALS INTERNATIONAL CAMPAIGNS / JUNKETS / TOURS (selected) Below we list the key elements of the international campaigns we have handled, but our work often also involves working closely with the local distributors and the film-makers and their representatives to ensure that all publicity opportunities are maximised. We have set up face-to-face and telephone interviews for actors and film-makers, working around their schedules to ensure that the key territories in particular are given as much access as possible, highlighting syndication opportunities, supplying information on special photography, incorporating international press into UK schedules that we are running, and looking at creative ways of scheduling press. THE AFTERMATH / James Kent / Fox Searchlight • International campaign support COLETTE / Wash Westmoreland / HanWay Films • International campaign BEAUTIFUL BOY / Felix van Groeningen / FilmNation • International campaign THE FAVOURITE / Yorgos Lanthimos / Fox Searchlight • International campaign support SUSPIRIA / Luca Guadagnino / Amazon Studios • International campaign LIFE ITSELF / Dan Fogelman / FilmNation • International campaign DISOBEDIENCE / Sebastián Lelio / FilmNation • International campaign THE CHILDREN ACT / Richard Eyre / FilmNation • International campaign DON’T WORRY, HE WON’T GET FAR ON FOOT / Gus Van Sant / Amazon Studios & FilmNation • International campaign ISLE OF DOGS / Wes Anderson / Fox Searchlight • International campaign THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI /
    [Show full text]
  • No Vember/De Cember 20 18
    NOV/DEC 2018 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2018 NOVEMBER/DECEMBER Christmas atCINEMASTERS: GFT BILLY WILDER PETERLOO | WIDOWS | NAE PASARAN SUSPIRIA | SHOPLIFTERS | OUTLAW KING FRENCH FILM FESTIVAL | AFRICA IN MOTION THE OLD MAN AND THE GUN | UTØYA | SQIFF GLASGOWFILM.ORG | 0141 332 6535 12 ROSE STREET, GLASGOW, G3 6RB CONTENTS 3 Days in Quiberon 23 Possum + Q&A 21 White Christmas 17 Access Film Club: Blindspotting 28 Science Fair 21 CINEMASTERS: BILLY WILDER Scottish Animation: Access Film Club: Home Alone 28 7 The Apartment 15 Stories Brought to Life Anna and the Apocalypse + short 23 Double Indemnity 15 Shoplifters 22 Archive Film, Propaganda and The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes - 5 15 Spanish Civil War Sorry to Bother You 23 35mm Bad Reputation 20 Super November + Q&A 7 Some Like It Hot 15 Becoming Animal + Q&A 6 Suspiria 22 Sunset Boulevard 15 Been So Long + Q&A 6 Three Identical Strangers 23 COMEDY GENIUS Blue Black Permanent 24 Utøya - July 22 20 9 to 5 25 Blueprint: Scottish Independent Shorts 8 Visible Cinema: It’s A Wonderful Life 28 Shaun of the Dead 25 Calibre + Q&A 5 Visible Cinema: RCS Curates: Widows 28 South Park Sing-a-long - 35mm 25 21 Disobedience 23 Widows DID YOU MISS 22 The Wild Pear Tree 23 Distant Voices, Still Lives Black 47 25 20 Wildlife 22 Don’t Worry, He Won’t Get Far on Foot BlacKkKlansman 25 6 A Woman Captured + Q&A 5 Evelyn + Discussion C’est la vie 25 20 The Workshop 22 An Evening with Beverley Luff Linn Cold War 25 @glasgowfilm 24 Worlds of Ursula K Le Guin 7 The Evil Dead ESTONIA NOW Fahrenheit 11/9 20 AFRICA
    [Show full text]
  • European Premiere of Free Fire to Close the 60Th
    EUROPEAN PREMIERE OF FREE FIRE TO CLOSE THE 60TH BFI LONDON FILM FESTIVAL LONDON – Monday 1 August, 2016: The 60th BFI London Film Festival in partnership with American Express® is proud to announce that this year’s Closing Night gala will be Ben Wheatley’s high-octane action thriller FREE FIRE. The film will receive its European premiere on Sunday 16 October at the Odeon Leicester Square, attended by cast and filmmakers. Massachusetts late ‘70s. Justine (Brie Larson) has brokered a meeting in a deserted warehouse between two Irishmen (Cillian Murphy, Michael Smiley) and a gang led by Vernon (Sharlto Copley) and Ord (Armie Hammer) who are selling them a stash of guns. But when shots are fired in the handover, a heart stopping game of survival ensues. Ben Wheatley says “I'm very proud to be showing FREE FIRE at the BFI London Film Festival. To be the closing film is a great honour. LFF have been fantastic in supporting the films I've made (me and an army of 100s) and I can't wait to show FREE FIRE to the Festival audience!” FREE FIRE is Wheatley’s third film to be presented at the Festival, following High-Rise (2015) which screened as Festival Gala and Sightseers (2012) which screened as Laugh Gala. BFI London Film Festival Director, Clare Stewart says: “Ben Wheatley’s ascent as one of the UK’s most dazzling cinematic talents continues with this ballsy actioner. Dripping with blood, sweat and irony, FREE FIRE’s bravura filmmaking pays knowing tribute to the films of Sam Peckinpah and features a terrific cast who clearly relish bringing Wheatley and co-writer Amy Jump’s vivid characters to the screen.
    [Show full text]