London Film Festival

This British Film Institute festival is a truly international affair that focuses on
　　great films rather than marketing big Hollywood movies.
　　Hello, I'm Yvonne Archer and you're listening to Entertainment from
　　bbclearningenglish.com!
　　Sandra Hebron is the artistic director of the London Film Festival and in an
　　interview for the BBC World Service, she talks about the international nature
　　of the festival – particularly this year, its 50th.  Listen out for the countries
　　Sandra mentions…
　　INSERT - SANDRA HEBRON
　　One of the best things the festival can do is to say that there is originality and creativity to be
　　found literally around the globe. I think one of the things that I would say about this year is
　　that we are still seeing really amazing work being produced from Latin America.  I think
　　Argentina continues to be really strong, you know, we have the new film by Pablo Trapero,
　　we have Adrian Caetano's new film - something like 7 or 8 really strong new films from
　　Argentina.
　　Mexico too is emerging too as very much one of the leading Latin American cinemas. I think
　　that East Asia continues to be very strong. We're very happy obviously to have “Still Life” -
　　Jia Zhangke's Venice winning film. But there are films from Japan, Korea - actually, two or
　　three films from the Philippines this year too, which is really a sort of new thing that we're
　　seeing. So a very kind of, a very diverse spread of work from really a huge range of countries.
　　Yvonne:  Wow, that's a pretty impressive list of countries - and many of them have
　　more than one film to be shown during the London Film Festival. But how
　　many of those countries did you manage to catch?  Sandra Hebron mentioned
　　Argentina and Mexico as Latin American countries and there was Japan,
　　Korea and the Philippines from Asia.  But did you notice any of the
　　adjectives that Sandra used to describe those films – which she obviously
　　thinks are worth seeing? They're adjectives that you might come across in film
　　reviews.  See how many of them you can catch as we hear from Sandra
　　again…
　　INSERT - SANDRA HEBRON
　　One of the best things the festival can do is to say that there is originality and creativity to be
　　found literally around the globe. I think one of the things that I would say about this year is
　　that we are still seeing really amazing work being produced from Latin America.  I think
　　Argentina continues to be really strong, you know, we have the new film by Pablo Trapero,
　　we have Adrian Caetano's new film - something like 7 or 8 really strong new films from
　　Argentina.
　　Mexico too is emerging too as very much one of the leading Latin American cinemas. I think
　　that East Asia continues to be very strong. We're very happy obviously to have “Still Life” -
　　Jia Zhangke's Venice winning film. But there are films from Japan, Korea - actually, two or
　　three films from the Philippines this year too, which is really a sort of new thing that we're
　　seeing. So a very kind of, a very diverse spread of work from really a huge range of countries.
　　Yvonne:  How did you get on?   We heard 'originality', 'creativity', 'amazing' and we
　　heard 'really strong' more than once. There was also 'leading' – as Sandra
　　described Mexico as 'one of the leading Latin American cinemas' – so Mexico
　　is producing some of the best films from the Latin American area. And you
　　may have noticed Sandra's last comment that there's 'a very diverse spread of
　　work' – meaning that there's a very large variety of films to be shown during
　　th
　　The Times 50  BFI London Film Festival!
　　INSERT - SANDRA HEBRON
　　A very diverse spread of work from really a huge range of countries.
　　Yvonne:  As there are so many great films to see during the Film Festival, it's almost
　　impossible to see them all. So how do we decide which films are worth seeing?
　　BBC Learning English's Alice Castle has attended the Berlin Film Festival, the
　　Karlovy Vary Film Festival in Prague and of course, the London Film Festival.
　　And Alice has also written several film reviews. Here she is with some tips on
　　how to choose our films:
　　INSERT - ALICE CASTLE
　　If you're going to a big film festival and you're trying to decide which films you want to see,
　　read the little what they call a 'blurb' which is the little bit of information that's written
　　underneath the film title and you'll usually find that they'll tell you what the story is, who the
　　director is, who the actors are – and that usually gives you a pretty good idea if you're going
　　to like the film.
　　Yvonne:  Alice has her favourite countries and directors and that helps her to choose
　　which films to watch. But if we're new to film festivals, all we need to do is
　　simply read the 'blurb – that's the information we're given about each film
　　including its story - and that's a good way to find a film that will interest us!
　　The main aim of the London Film Festival is simply to show good films!