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The BFI is continuing its commitment to embedding sustainability across its venues, partnerships, funding, and public programmes with a series of events at BFI IMAX for London Climate Action Week (21–29 June).

The focus highlights the role of film and storytelling in tackling the climate crisis to inform, inspire and mobilise audiences around one of the defining challenges of our time – with maximum impact on the biggest screen in the UK. As one of the most iconic cinemas in the world, BFI IMAX is also leading the way in cinema sustainability, including the early adoption of energy-efficient heat pump technology.

The flagship event of the week, on 23 June, will be a free “In Conversation” event with creators of the acclaimed Netflix series Toxic Town, Jack Thorne and Annabel Jones, in which the pair will explore the power of storytelling in spotlighting environmental issues, hosted by BBC Radio 1 and 1Xtra presenter Swarzy.

Studio Ghibli’s prestigious reputation consists of truths and exaggerations. The company has spent 40 years as a world leader in quality animation while independently funding projects based on prior successes — until their sale to Nippon TV in 2023.

Behind every great library of art is a machine that needs to sell it, and Ghibli, which turns 40 this June, is no different. As much as we laud the altruistic, ethical enterprise established by Toshio Suzuki, Isao Takahata, and Hayao Miyazaki, Ghibli can be just as cynical as its Western counterparts.

Ghibli’s branding as an ethical animation studio isn’t unfounded. Rayna Denison, author of “Studio Ghibli: An Industrial History,” has admired the thoughtful way Suzuki, Takahata, and Miyazaki constructed the studio.

“They put deep thought into what they wanted to do with their studio before they founded it,” Denison told IndieWire. “You get early interviews with Miyazaki saying things like, ‘If...

For our latest dive into recent books on or related to cinema, we’re spending time with some icons––fictional (James Bond) and non. Let’s start with 50 color palettes and one beautifully unique new text.

Colors of Film: The Story of Cinema in 50 Palettes by Charles Bramesco (Frances Lincoln)

Colors of Film is an engrossing study of how filmmakers utilize color in complex, ingenious, emotionally impactful ways. Some of these examples (e.g. the red jacket in Schindler’s List) have inspired much discourse. What makes this book––by the always-entertaining and -intelligent critic Charles Bramesco––so special is its focus on less-obvious films. A noteworthy case: Hype Williams’ Belly and its “flights of stylistic fancy.” During its hyper-stylized opening, as gangsters Buns and Sin “prowl through the dance floor, ceiling-mounted blacklights make the men look extraterrestrial, their eyeballs glowstick-turquoise against deeper blue skin.” Other entries focus on everything...

As the leaves crunch underfoot and the wintry chill intensifies, you may realize: it’s time to think of a good gift for that friend of yours who’s already packed their shelves to the gills with Blu-rays and back issues of Cahiers du Cinéma. Have no fear. Covering books, home video, music, posters, and apparel, here are some gift ideas for the dearest cinephiles in your life.Books And MAGAZINESFireflies Press recently published Pier Paolo Pasolini: Writing on Burning Paper: a beautiful set of two complementary volumes to honor the filmmaker’s centenary. The smaller book includes a revised translation of his poem “Poet of the Ashes,” while the larger volume includes tributes from 20 contemporary artists and critics, including Catherine Breillat, Jia Zhangke, Luc Moullet, Angela Schanelec, and Mike Leigh.Written by Karen Han, Bong Joon Ho: Dissident Cinema is a mid-career monograph covering the Korean auteur’s features,...

The winners will be announced at an in-person ceremony on Sunday, December 5.

Producer Andrea Cornwell and actors Emma Corrin and Jason Isaacs are among the jurors of this year’s British Independent Film Awards (BIFA).

Mogul Mowgli producer Bennett McGhee presides over the main jury that includes Cornwell; The Crown star Corrin; actress Jennifer Ehle; director and writer Alice Lowe; director and cinematographer Molly Manning Walker (a Screen Star Of Tomorrow this year); Ted Lasso casting director Theo Park; composer Nainita Desai and writer-broadcasters Simran Hans and Michael Leader.

The new talent jury is chaired by actress, writer and director...

Exclusive: The British Independent Film Awards is for the first time launching a podcast, This Is My Cinema, with a group of UK indie film names lined up to discuss their craft and inspiration over the coming weeks.

Guests include several 2021 BIFA nominees such as Morfydd Clark (Saint Maud), Sarah Gavron (Rocks), Harris Dickinson (County Lines), Niamh Algar (Calm With Horses) and Reggie Yates (writer/director and BIFA Juror). The pod will be hosted by Michael Leader and Rhianna Dhillon (BBC 6 Music).

Episode one of the show, which features Harris Dickinson, who is up for the supporting actor BIFA this year, will be available once you read this across major pod providers.

The 2021 BIFAs take place on February 18 via a live-streamed virtual ceremony hosted by Tom Felton.

Chloe Sherman (Kiera Allen), the protagonist of Run, is a differently abled teenage girl who lives a quiet, reclusive life with her mother Diane (Sarah Paulson) at their rural home in Washington State. Bright, talented and home educated by the devoted Diane, Chloe has been plagued by illness literally since birth: diabetes, asthma, and cardiac arrhythmia are among the issues she deals with daily, not to mention being confined to a wheelchair due to the loss of use of her legs.

Nevertheless, mother and daughter seem to lead a relatively happy life, even if mom sidesteps her requests for an iPhone and Chloe is disappointed that she has not heard back yet from Washington State University regarding her college application. But one day Chloe discovers something that doesn’t quite make sense, and suddenly realizes that her life with Diane–who literally controls her daughter’s carefully calibrated life from...

It takes a certain amount of cojones to remake a movie by Alfred Hitchcock, especially one that nabbed the Academy Award for Best Picture and remains a stone cold classic some 80 years after it first came out. But that’s what British director Ben Wheatley has done with Rebecca, albeit with a film (his first for Netflix) that’s as much a new adaptation of the 1938 Daphne du Maurier novel as it a remake of the master’s Gothic melodrama.

Wheatley is no stranger to risky filmmaking–his resolutely indie resume so far includes extremely unsettling horror (The Kill List), genuinely weird psychedelic experimentation (A Field in England), disturbing dystopian sci-fi (High-Rise), and darkly comedic yet hyper-violent crime thrillers (Sightseers and Free Fire). His biggest risk here, of course, is having his work compared to a landmark from one of film’s most iconic directors. Yet he largely manages to pull off the attempt,...

‘When somebody decides to call a character Brock Blennerhassett,’ says Michael Smiley, ‘you think, well, that hasn’t just come off the top of your head, there must be something going on there!’ What’s going on with Blennerhassett, his lead role in new darkly comic Victorian drama Dead Still, is strange, timely and layered, says Smiley.

Dead Still, available in the UK now to stream on Acorn TV, is ‘a dark, funny, proper period drama set in Dublin in Victorian times’ Smiley explains. His character Blennerhassett is part of the Anglo-Irish landed gentry who’s broken away to work in the experimental field of memorial photography, taking pictures of posed corpses for bereaved families. ‘That was a big thing in Victorian times because of the British Empire being in mourning after Prince Albert died.’

The series blends a murder mystery with gallows humour and colonial Irish politics. ‘All of...

James Hunt Aug 4, 2017

It introduced John Boyega, features Jodie Whitaker, and it's a great invasion movie. We take a second look at Attack The Block...

In 2011, the writer and director Joe Cornish released his debut feature film, Attack The Block, in which aliens begin their invasion of Earth on a South London housing estate. With a cast of rising stars and a director as confident as they come, the movie quickly gained a cult following and has proven itself a wellspring of talent.

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But for whatever reason, the movie itself failed to catch fire commercially. It made back only half its budget at the box office despite near-universal critical acclaim. Den of Geek’s own Michael Leader gave it 4 stars, praising its visual flair and sense of invention.

Paterson Joseph chats to us about Good Omens, Peep Show, being cut from Paddington, and why he'd "never say never" to playing the Doctor...

Where do you begin with Paterson Joseph? Be it on stage or the small screen, he’s popped up everywhere from Shakespeare to Survivors, from Casualty to Green Wing. To some, he’s the suave, sharply dressed and, latterly, lapsed alcoholic Alan Johnson in Peep Show. But to others, this writer included, he’ll always be the mysterious, flamboyant swashbuckler, the Marquis de Carabas, from Neil Gaiman’s rich sub-London fantasy Neverwhere.

Now, he’s appearing on BBC Radio 4 in a festive double bill of prestige productions. First, he’s giving voice to fast-food mogul and horseman of the apocalypse Famine in Good Omens, adapted from the novel by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Then, on New Year’s Day, he’s Pierre, the passionate protagonist...

Michael Leader Nov 2, 2019

Alfred Hitchcock, the Master of Suspense, had a career that spanned 50-plus films. We think we can narrow it down to the 10 best.

Whenever geeky film conversations turn to the topic of the greatest British directors, a few answers frequently crop up: Charlie Chaplin, David Lean, Nicolas Roeg, and Michael Powell are just a handful of a list of potentials, but there is one man whose impact on film history outclasses almost all contenders: Alfred Hitchcock.

Born on the cusp of the 20th Century, Hitchcock came to define entire genres of cinema in a career that spanned over 50 years and over 50 films. His body of work - not to mention his rotund body itself - is both immense and iconic, full of tense thrillers, psycho-dramas, and adventure flicks that were not only wildly popular at the time, but inspired both critical re-evaluation and whole new generations of filmmakers in ensuing years.