Kauwboy

As a Barbican Young Programmer, today I had a training day at the BFI Southbank with my fellow programmers. We had talks on programming the London Film Festival from Michael Hayden (Festival Programmer, LFF) and Justin Johnson (Family Programmer, LFF); programming your own film festival from the BFI FILMCLUB team (a little irrelevant as it was really aimed at primary / young secondary school students…); and programming a children’s film festival from members of the programming and marketing teams at Cinemagic (Belfast Children’s Film Festival). This is one of the things I love about this programme at the Barbican: we’re getting to meet and talk to people who actually review / programme / certify films, and I’ve never met so many people who are all so utterly enthusiastic about their jobs! Clearly this “non-glamorous” side of the film industry isn’t so bad afterall…

At the end of the day we rushed into NFT2 to watch Kauwboy, a film being shown in the LFF and that is due to be shown at the Barbican’s Framed Film Festival in November. I’m involved in Framed so I’ll be blogging about it a lot in November, and I can already say with confidence that it’s going to be amazing! It’s aimed primarily at young people, with the films targeting audiences from 4-roughly 18 years of age; however it can definitely be enjoyed by everyone. At the moment notable features have to be Kauwboy and One Mile Away (which I have a half-finished blog post written that I will complete and post asap!). I’ll blog further details nearer the time, but I expect to hear from you all about the films you came to see and what you thought of them!

“Take good care of a jackdaw and you’ll have a friend for life.”

BFI Screen Talk with Marion Cotillard

It was just by sheer luck that I logged into Twitter on Friday when the BFI tweeted that a limited number of tickets had become available for a Screen Talk with Marion Cotillard on the 14th October, as part of the London Film Festival. Prior to this, I’d resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to attend the festival in any way and would have to content myself to watching the entire event unfold over the Internet from the comfort of my room. Well, I’m all about the Impulse Buy these days and within minutes I’d bought myself a ticket and smugly watched as the event sold out.