Notícias

Director and producer who supported the making of classic British films including Gregory’s Girl, Babylon and When the Wind Blows

The producer Mamoun Hassan, who has died aged 84, was a significant figure in British cinema of the 1970s and 80s, whose remarkable career, if not entirely satisfying his artistic gifts, was unusual in that it enabled so many other film-makers’ careers, and gave rise to numerous courageously non-commercial projects. What was notable was how commercial some of them turned out to be.

Although he was a talented director and screenwriter, it was in his roles as the first head of production of the British Film Institute (1971-74) and managing director of the National Film Finance Corporation that Mamoun was most influential, being instrumental in the making of such classic British films as Bill Forsyth’s Gregory’s Girl, Franco Rosso’s Babylon (both 1980) and the animated adaptation of Raymond Briggs’s When the Wind Blows,...

Franco Rosso’s Thatcher-era drama to premiere theatrically in March.

Nearly 40 years after it premiered in Cannes Critics’ Week, cult British reggae film Babylon will get its first Us release through Kino Lorber Repertory and new boutique distributor Seventy-Seven.

Franco Rosso’s Thatcher-era drama about racial tension and police brutality stars Brinsley Forde, founder of British reggae band Aswad, as a dancehall DJ in south London who battles xenophobia, neighbours, police, and the National Front.

The film was deemed so incendiary that after screenings on the Croisette and the Toronto International Film Festival, top brass at the New York Film Festival passed.

“I spent a lot of time reviewing the silent films for crowd scenes –the way extras move, evolve, how the space is staged and how the cameras capture it, the views used,” Nolan said earlier this year when it came to the creation of his WWII epic Dunkirk, referencing films such as Intolerance, Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, and Greed, as well as the films of Robert Bresson.

Throughout the entire month of July, if you’re in the U.K., you are lucky enough to witness a selection of these influences in a program at BFI Southbank. Featuring all screenings in 35mm or 70mm — including a preview of Dunkirk over a week before it hits theaters — there’s classics such as Greed, Sunrise, and The Wages of Fear, as well as Alien, Speed, and even Tony Scott’s final film.

Check out Nolan’s introduction below, followed by...

Running from 1-31 July, BFI Southbank are delighted to present a season of films which have inspired director Christopher Nolan’s new feature Dunkirk (2017), released in cinemas across the UK on Friday 21 July.

Christopher Nolan Presents has been personally curated by the award-winning director and will offer audiences unique insight into the films which influenced his hotly anticipated take on one of the key moments of WWII.

The season will include a special preview screening of Dunkirk on Thursday 13 July, which will be presented in 70mm and include an introduction from the director himself.

Christopher Nolan is a passionate advocate for the importance of seeing films projected on film, and as one of the few cinemas in the UK that still shows a vast amount of celluloid film, BFI Southbank will screen all the films in the season on 35mm or 70mm.

In 2015 Nolan appeared on stage alongside visual artist...

Producer of award-winning documentaries and short films

The producer Anne Balfour-Fraser, who has died aged 92, oversaw the making of some 100 short films between the mid-1950s and mid-80s. Very varied, their common thread was an artistic, humanitarian sensibility and a sensitive cultivation of directing, camera and editing talent. Among those who at some point worked at her premises in Brewer Street, London, were Kevin Brownlow, John Krish, Mamoun Hassan, Peter K Smith, the German theatre director Peter Zadek and the eminent producer of Polanski and others, Timothy Burrill.

She was born in Woking, Surrey, into an illustrious family. Her grandfather was the Conservative politician Gerald Balfour, who succeeded as Earl of Balfour on the death of his brother Arthur, the Conservative prime minister; her grandmother Lady Betty (nee Bulwer-Lytton) was a leading moderate suffragist; and her great-aunt was the more militant suffragist Lady Constance Lytton, who was imprisoned several times.

“Songs Of Humanity”

By Raymond Benson

I’ll bet many of you cinephiles out there have heard of Indian filmmaker Satyajit Ray’s acclaimed trilogy of films from the 1950s (Pather Panchali, aka Song of the Little Road, 1955; Aparajito, aka The Unvanquished, 1956; and Apur Sansar, aka The World of Apu, 1959), but have never actually seen them. Here is your chance to rectify that egregious error. Quite simply put, anyone interested in film history needs to have this trio of motion pictures under the belt.

Satyajit Ray, who received an Honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement in 1992, began his career as an illustrator of books. One of these was Pather Panchali, a classic of Bengali literature (1928) written by Bibhutibushan Bandyopadhyay, and its sequel, Aparajito (1932). They comprise the story of the growth of a boy from infancy to adulthood over the course of twenty-five years or so (from the 1910s to the 1930s...

The British Film Institute (BFI) is hosting a special two-month Satyajit Ray season, the first of which will be held in August. Ray’s films will be screened throughout the month in London, in association with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Ray received an Academy Award for Lifetime Achievement-just before his death in Calcutta-in 1992.

The films to be screened as part of Ray season in August are Pather Panchali, Aparajito, Mahanagar, Jalsaghar, Apur Sansar, Devi, Teen Kanya, Charulata, Kanchenjungha, Nayak, Kapurush, Chiriakhana, Abhijan and Parash Pathar.

Two documentaries directed by Ray– commemorating writer, artist and composer Rabindranath Tagore and Satyajit Ray’s father Sukumar Ray will also be screened.

A Masterclass will be conducted on Pather Panchali by filmmaker and teacher Mamoun Hassan, who headed the BFI in 1970s.

As reported earlier, BFI will also release Ray’s Mahanagar to mark the 50th anniversary of the film.

The BFI's assumption of the UK Film Council's responsibilities continues a decades-long saga of chopping and changing in the British film industry

This morning's announcement by Ed Vaizey confirms the rumours that have been circulating from pretty much the moment that the UK Film Council was abolished: the British Film Institute will be picking up the reins of lottery-fund distribution to the film industry. What's remarkable is that, after over two decades of chopping and changing, we are back where we were in the late 1980s: the BFI is the only game in town.

It's especially extraordinary given the kind of rhetoric that accompanied the establishment of the UK Film Council in 2000. When John Woodward was appointed the UK Film Council's chief executive in 2000, an interview he gave to the Guardian was perceived to be a not-especially-coded attack on the kind of – largely experimental – film the BFI's production...