What used to be called the National Film Theatre, now BFI Southbank, is a weird sort of place. On the outside it is unprepossessing to the point of ugliness: a concrete mass sitting beneath the southern end of Waterloo Bridge, squat against the Thames, where it sulks away from the sunlight and overhead traffic. Whereas, on the inside, it offers a pretty jumble of conveniences for its clientele: a grand upholstered auditorium; a scattering of more utilitarian screens; a digital library of film called the ‘Mediatheque’; and a glassy bar and shop. The effect is rather like those ‘Ascent of Man’ diagrams that show the evolutionary links between monkeys and us, except in this case it’s for the movie theatre business.
Yet for 11 days in October this peculiar building will be shrouded in Gauloise smoke and air kisses as it becomes the centre of London’s cultural scene. By my count, a quarter of the BFI London Film Festival’s 500-plus screenings will be held here, with the rest spread across 13 other venues in the capital. There will be movies from America, Serbia, Sri Lanka, Egypt and most places in between. The world is coming to London — just as it did for the Olympics.
Putting aside the quality of the films for now, the British Film Institute and its spiritual home on the Southbank deserve a successful festival. It has, on the whole, been a momentous year for the Institute. Its house magazine, Sight & Sound, recently published the results of its once-a-decade poll of critics and filmmakers to identify the best films of all time; Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane (1941) was deposed from the top spot for the first time in 50 years, replaced by Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo (1958). But, more importantly, during this time of reduced state funding, the BFI sets about its task with little fuss, and even with some panache.
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