Callum: This is Talk about English live from London. I'm Callum Robertson.
Jackie: I'm Jackie Dalton
Callum: And also with us is guest Gareth Rees.
Jackie: Our current Talk about English topic is films and film lovers in London are in for a treat at the end of October and beginning of November.
Callum: Yes, it's nearly time for the The Times BFI 50 th London Film Festival.
Jackie: In the two weeks of the festival there will be showings of 181 Features and 131 short films alongside live events, masterclasses and screen talks.
Callum: There will be 4 World Premieres, 32 European and 123 UK premieres. The film that opens the festival on 18 th October is 'The Last King of Scotland' which stars American actor Forest Whittaker as Idi Amin, the former leader of Uganda.
Jackie: The film is based on events during the time of Amin's period in power as seen through the eyes of his fictional personal doctor, Scotsman Nicolas Garrigan.
Here's a taster from The Last King of Scotland.
LAST KING TRAILOR
(PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS THE FILM TRAILERS ARE NOT AVAILABLE IN THE DOWNLOAD VERSION OF THE PROGRAMME)
Callum: That was part of a trailer for the Film the Last King of Scotland which will be opening the London Film Festival. Unfortunately you wouldn't have heard it
if you are listening to the download version of this programme. For rights reasons I'm afraid we can't make these film clips part of the download.
Jackie: The Times 50 th BFI London Film Festival is a truly international festival. It's not really a festival to market big Hollywood movies.
Callum: Sandra Hebron is the artistic director of the festival. In an interview for the World Service she talked about the international nature of the festival, which countries does she mention?
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, 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 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 a really a sort of new thing that we're seeing. So a very kind of , very diverse spread of work from really a huge range of countries.
Jackie: She mentioned Argentina, Mexico, Japan, Korea and the Philippines.
Callum: One of the films she mentioned was the latest film by Argentinean director Pablo Trapero, Born and Bred, a film about a happy family whose lives are apparently shattered when they are involved in a car crash.
BORN AND BRED TRAILOR
(PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS THE FILM TRAILERS ARE NOT AVAILABLE IN THE DOWNLOAD VERSION OF THE PROGRAMME)
Jackie: That was the teaser trailer from Pablo Trapero's film Born and Bred.
Callum: Unlike other film festivals such as Cannes and Venice the London Film Festival is not really a competition. There are no big prizes for best film and so on. We asked Sandra Hebron artistic director of the festival whether that was an advantage or disadvantage for the festival.
SANDRA HEBRON I don't think it's a problem at all. I think quite the opposite. I think not being competitive means that we can pull together a much stronger programme than we would be able to were we competitive. Because what competitive festivals have ot do is they have to be driven by finding World Premieres, whereas we have to be driven by finding the best films that we can irrespective of whether or not they've screened elsewhere. That's a huge advantage and you know means we can have a very high quality programme.
Jackie: Sandra sees the lack of competition to be an advantage for London. They don't have to look for new films, just good films.
Callum: The Times BFI 50 th London Film Festival runs from the 18 th October to the 2 nd
November. Here's another trailer from one of the films being shown in the festival. It's the US v John Lennon, a documentary about John Lennon's life in the United States when he became an anti-war activist and how the US government reacted to that.
US v JOHN LENNON TRAILOR (PLEASE NOTE THAT FOR COPYRIGHT REASONS THE FILM TRAILERS ARE NOT AVAILABLE IN THE DOWNLOAD VERSION OF THE PROGRAMME)
Callum: Gareth, do you like the London Film Festival – will you be going along to catch some movies or masterclasses?